Related papers: Black-Box Data-efficient Policy Search for Robotic…

We present an off-policy actor-critic algorithm for Reinforcement Learning (RL) that combines ideas from gradient-free optimization via stochastic search with learned action-value function. The result is a simple procedure consisting of…

The performance of many algorithms in the fields of hard combinatorial problem solving, machine learning or AI in general depends on tuned hyperparameter configurations. Automated methods have been proposed to alleviate users from the…

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Action-constrained reinforcement learning (RL) is a widely-used approach in various real-world applications, such as scheduling in networked systems with resource constraints and control of a robot with kinematic constraints. While the…

A long-standing goal in AI is to develop agents capable of solving diverse tasks across a range of environments, including those never seen during training. Two dominant paradigms address this challenge: (i) reinforcement learning (RL),…

Since its introduction a decade ago, \emph{relative entropy policy search} (REPS) has demonstrated successful policy learning on a number of simulated and real-world robotic domains, not to mention providing algorithmic components used by…

During initial iterations of training in most Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms, agents perform a significant number of random exploratory steps. In the real world, this can limit the practicality of these algorithms as it can lead to…

We consider the offline reinforcement learning (RL) setting where the agent aims to optimize the policy solely from the data without further environment interactions. In offline RL, the distributional shift becomes the primary source of…

Differential evolution (DE) algorithm is recognized as one of the most effective evolutionary algorithms, demonstrating remarkable efficacy in black-box optimization due to its derivative-free nature. Numerous enhancements to the…

Mastering deep reinforcement learning (DRL) proves challenging in tasks featuring scant rewards. These limited rewards merely signify whether the task is partially or entirely accomplished, necessitating various exploration actions before…

Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…

Distributionally robust offline reinforcement learning (RL) aims to find a policy that performs the best under the worst environment within an uncertainty set using an offline dataset collected from a nominal model. While recent advances in…

The Robust Markov Decision Process (RMDP) framework focuses on designing control policies that are robust against the parameter uncertainties due to the mismatches between the simulator model and real-world settings. An RMDP problem is…

Ensuring safety for black-box hybrid dynamical systems presents significant challenges due to their instantaneous state jumps and unknown explicit nonlinear dynamics. Existing solutions for strict safety constraint satisfaction, like…

In collaborative human-robot order picking systems, human pickers and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) travel independently through a warehouse and meet at pick locations where pickers load items onto the AMRs. In this paper, we consider an…

We develop several provably efficient model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We consider both online setting and the setting with access to a simulator. In the…

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising strategy for finetuning small language models (SLMs) to solve targeted tasks such as math and coding. However, RL algorithms tend to be resource-intensive, taking a significant amount…

The diverse world of machine learning applications has given rise to a plethora of algorithms and optimization methods, finely tuned to the specific regression or classification task at hand. We reduce the complexity of algorithm design for…

Several low-bandwidth distributable black-box optimization algorithms in the family of finite differences such as Evolution Strategies have recently been shown to perform nearly as well as tailored Reinforcement Learning methods in some…

Tremendous progress has been made in reinforcement learning (RL) over the past decade. Most of these advancements came through the continual development of new algorithms, which were designed using a combination of mathematical derivations,…