Related papers: Variance Adjusted Actor Critic Algorithms
To learn approximately optimal acting policies for decision problems, modern Actor Critic algorithms rely on deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to parameterize the acting policy and greedification operators to iteratively improve it. The reliance…
We show that the simplest actor-critic method -- a linear softmax policy updated with TD through interaction with a linear MDP, but featuring no explicit regularization or exploration -- does not merely find an optimal policy, but moreover…
We revisit the standard formulation of tabular actor-critic algorithm as a two time-scale stochastic approximation with value function computed on a faster time-scale and policy computed on a slower time-scale. This emulates policy…
We consider the dynamic multichannel access problem, which can be formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). We first propose a model-free actor-critic deep reinforcement learning based framework to explore the…
Actor-critic algorithms have shown remarkable success in solving state-of-the-art decision-making problems. However, despite their empirical effectiveness, their theoretical underpinnings remain relatively unexplored, especially with neural…
Bandit algorithms are widely used in sequential decision problems to maximize the cumulative reward. One potential application is mobile health, where the goal is to promote the user's health through personalized interventions based on user…
Reinforcement learning in multi-agent scenarios is important for real-world applications but presents challenges beyond those seen in single-agent settings. We present an actor-critic algorithm that trains decentralized policies in…
Many popular practical reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms employ evolving reward functions-through techniques such as reward shaping, entropy regularization, or curriculum learning-yet their theoretical foundations remain…
Decentralized (PO)MDPs provide an expressive framework for sequential decision making in a multiagent system. Given their computational complexity, recent research has focused on tractable yet practical subclasses of Dec-POMDPs. We address…
We study infinite-horizon Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with general policy parameterizations and multi-layer neural network critics. Existing theoretical analyses for constrained reinforcement learning largely rely on…
In this article we consider an optimization problem where the objective function is evaluated at the fixed-point of a contraction mapping parameterized by a control variable, and optimization takes place over this control variable. Since…
In this paper, we consider the problem of deploying a robot from a specification given as a temporal logic statement about some properties satisfied by the regions of a large, partitioned environment. We assume that the robot has noisy…
In this work, we consider policy-based methods for solving the reinforcement learning problem, and establish the sample complexity guarantees. A policy-based algorithm typically consists of an actor and a critic. We consider using various…
We focus on a simulation-based optimization problem of choosing the best design from the feasible space. Although the simulation model can be queried with finite samples, its internal processing rule cannot be utilized in the optimization…
The exploitation of extra state information has been an active research area in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). QMIX represents the joint action-value using a non-negative function approximator and achieves the best performance,…
In this paper, we propose a distributed off-policy actor critic method to solve multi-agent reinforcement learning problems. Specifically, we assume that all agents keep local estimates of the global optimal policy parameter and update…
We study the global convergence and global optimality of actor-critic, one of the most popular families of reinforcement learning algorithms. While most existing works on actor-critic employ bi-level or two-timescale updates, we focus on…
The current state-of-the-art theoretical analysis of Actor-Critic (AC) algorithms significantly lags in addressing the practical aspects of AC implementations. This crucial gap needs bridging to bring the analysis in line with practical…
Reinforcement learning, mathematically described by Markov Decision Problems, may be approached either through dynamic programming or policy search. Actor-critic algorithms combine the merits of both approaches by alternating between steps…
Multi-agent reinforcement learning has been successfully applied to a number of challenging problems. Despite these empirical successes, theoretical understanding of different algorithms is lacking, primarily due to the curse of…