Related papers: Learning Policies for Markov Decision Processes fr…
Policy Optimization (PO) methods are among the most popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms in practice. Recently, Sherman et al. [2023a] proposed a PO-based algorithm with rate-optimal regret guarantees under the linear Markov…
Inverse reinforcement learning methods aim to retrieve the reward function of a Markov decision process based on a dataset of expert demonstrations. The commonplace scarcity and heterogeneous sources of such demonstrations can lead to the…
Reinforcement learning means finding the optimal course of action in Markovian environments without knowledge of the environment's dynamics. Stochastic optimization algorithms used in the field rely on estimates of the value of a policy.…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a fundamental model for sequential decision making under process uncertainty. A classical synthesis task is to compute for a given MDP a winning policy that achieves a desired specification. However,…
The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…
We study data-driven learning of robust stochastic control for infinite-horizon systems with potentially continuous state and action spaces. In many managerial settings--supply chains, finance, manufacturing, services, and dynamic…
Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…
We study the problem of online learning with dynamics, where a learner interacts with a stateful environment over multiple rounds. In each round of the interaction, the learner selects a policy to deploy and incurs a cost that depends on…
A central object of study in Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the Markovian policy, in which an agent's actions are chosen from a memoryless probability distribution, conditioned only on its current state. The family of Markovian policies is…
Methods for learning and planning in sequential decision problems often assume the learner is aware of all possible states and actions in advance. This assumption is sometimes untenable. In this paper, we give a method to learn factored…
In order to model risk aversion in reinforcement learning, an emerging line of research adapts familiar algorithms to optimize coherent risk functionals, a class that includes conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). Because optimizing the…
Policies for partially observed Markov decision processes can be efficiently learned by imitating policies for the corresponding fully observed Markov decision processes. Unfortunately, existing approaches for this kind of imitation…
We develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…
In the framework of Markov Decision Processes, off-policy learning, that is the problem of learning a linear approximation of the value function of some fixed policy from one trajectory possibly generated by some other policy. We briefly…
We present a probabilistic model for stochastic iterative algorithms with the use case of optimization algorithms in mind. Based on this model, we present PAC-Bayesian generalization bounds for functions that are defined on the trajectory…
This paper concentrates on the reliability of a discrete-time controlled Markov system with finite states and actions, and aims to give an efficient algorithm for obtaining an optimal (control) policy that makes the system have the maximal…
Constrained Markov Decision Processes are a class of stochastic decision problems in which the decision maker must select a policy that satisfies auxiliary cost constraints. This paper extends upper confidence reinforcement learning for…
A fundamental algorithm for selecting ranks from a finite subset of an ordered set is Radix Selection. This algorithm requires the data to be given as strings of symbols over an ordered alphabet, e.g., binary expansions of real numbers. Its…
This paper presents an online method that learns optimal decisions for a discrete time Markov decision problem with an opportunistic structure. The state at time $t$ is a pair $(S(t),W(t))$ where $S(t)$ takes values in a finite set…
This paper studies the problem of data collection for policy evaluation in Markov decision processes (MDPs). In policy evaluation, we are given a target policy and asked to estimate the expected cumulative reward it will obtain in an…