Related papers: Geometry of Policy Improvement
We consider a settings of hierarchical reinforcement learning, in which the reward is a sum of components. For each component we are given a policy that maximizes it and our goal is to assemble a policy from the individual policies that…
We consider the batch (off-line) policy learning problem in the infinite horizon Markov Decision Process. Motivated by mobile health applications, we focus on learning a policy that maximizes the long-term average reward. We propose a…
In Reinforcement Learning (abbreviated as RL), an agent interacts with the environment via a set of possible actions, and a reward is generated from some unknown distribution. The task here is to find an optimal set of actions such that the…
We introduce a method for policy improvement that interpolates between the greedy approach of value-based reinforcement learning (RL) and the full planning approach typical of model-based RL. The new method builds on the concept of a…
In most common settings of Markov Decision Process (MDP), an agent evaluate a policy based on expectation of (discounted) sum of rewards. However in many applications this criterion might not be suitable from two perspective: first, in risk…
We consider sequential decision making in a setting where regret is measured with respect to a set of stateful reference policies, and feedback is limited to observing the rewards of the actions performed (the so called "bandit" setting).…
Local Policy Search is a popular reinforcement learning approach for handling large state spaces. Formally, it searches locally in a paramet erized policy space in order to maximize the associated value function averaged over some…
We show that in a cooperative $N$-agent network, one can design locally executable policies for the agents such that the resulting discounted sum of average rewards (value) well approximates the optimal value computed over all (including…
We consider the problem of how strategic users with asymmetric information can learn an underlying time varying state in a user-recommendation system. Users who observe private signals about the state, sequentially make a decision about…
We tackle the issue of finding a good policy when the number of policy updates is limited. This is done by approximating the expected policy reward as a sequence of concave lower bounds which can be efficiently maximized, drastically…
We study the policy evaluation problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning, modeled by a Markov decision process. In this problem, the agents operate in a common environment under a fixed control policy, working together to discover the…
Many real-world problems require making sequences of decisions where the outcomes of each decision are probabilistic and uncertain, and the availability of different actions is constrained by the outcomes of previous actions. There is a…
Motivated by applications where impatience is pervasive and evaluation times are uncertain, we study a selection model where options may expire at an unknown point in time and evaluation times are stochastic. Initially, the decision-maker…
Approaches to policy optimization have been motivated from diverse principles, based on how the parametric model is interpreted (e.g. value versus policy representation) or how the learning objective is formulated, yet they share a common…
We propose a novel actor-critic, model-free reinforcement learning algorithm which employs a Bayesian method of parameter space exploration to solve environments. A Gaussian process is used to learn the expected return of a policy given the…
Recently discovered polyhedral structures of the value function for finite state-action discounted Markov decision processes (MDP) shed light on understanding the success of reinforcement learning. We investigate the value function polytope…
This paper presents policy-based motion planning for robotic systems. The motion planning literature has been mostly focused on open-loop trajectory planning which is followed by tracking online. In contrast, we solve the problem of path…
Reinforcement-learning agents seek to maximize a reward signal through environmental interactions. As humans, our job in the learning process is to design reward functions to express desired behavior and enable the agent to learn such…
We propose a formulation of the stochastic cutting stock problem as a discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision process. At each decision epoch, given current inventory of items, an agent chooses in which patterns to cut objects in stock…
The endeavor of artificial intelligence (AI) is to design autonomous agents capable of achieving complex tasks. Namely, reinforcement learning (RL) proposes a theoretical background to learn optimal behaviors. In practice, RL algorithms…