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Q-Learning is a fundamental off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that has the objective of approximating action-value functions in order to learn optimal policies. Nonetheless, it has difficulties in reconciling bias with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-22 Mahammad Humayoo

Model-free deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have been demonstrated on a range of challenging decision making and control tasks. However, these methods typically suffer from two major challenges: very high sample complexity and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-10 Tuomas Haarnoja , Aurick Zhou , Pieter Abbeel , Sergey Levine

We present a novel definition of the reinforcement learning state, actions and reward function that allows a deep Q-network (DQN) to learn to control an optimization hyperparameter. Using Q-learning with experience replay, we train two DQNs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-06-21 Samantha Hansen

We consider a problem of learning the reward and policy from expert examples under unknown dynamics. Our proposed method builds on the framework of generative adversarial networks and introduces the empowerment-regularized maximum-entropy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-26 Ahmed H. Qureshi , Byron Boots , Michael C. Yip

Policy gradient (PG) methods are the backbone of many reinforcement learning algorithms due to their good performance in policy optimization problems. As a gradient-based approach, PG methods typically rely on knowledge of the system…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-02 Bowen Song , Andrea Iannelli

Off-policy model-free deep reinforcement learning methods using previously collected data can improve sample efficiency over on-policy policy gradient techniques. On the other hand, on-policy algorithms are often more stable and easier to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-02 Shixiang Gu , Timothy Lillicrap , Zoubin Ghahramani , Richard E. Turner , Bernhard Schölkopf , Sergey Levine

Policy gradient methods, where one searches for the policy of interest by maximizing the value functions using first-order information, become increasingly popular for sequential decision making in reinforcement learning, games, and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-10 Shicong Cen , Yuejie Chi

This article introduces an imitation learning method for learning maximum entropy policies that comply with constraints demonstrated by expert trajectories executing a task. The formulation of the method takes advantage of results…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-10 George Papadopoulos , George A. Vouros

Offline reinforcement learning requires reconciling two conflicting aims: learning a policy that improves over the behavior policy that collected the dataset, while at the same time minimizing the deviation from the behavior policy so as to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-13 Ilya Kostrikov , Ashvin Nair , Sergey Levine

$Q$-learning is the most fundamental model-free reinforcement learning algorithm. Deployment of $Q$-learning requires approximation of the state-action value function (also known as the $Q$-function). In this work, we provide online random…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-11 Joosung Min , Lloyd T. Elliott

Entropy regularized algorithms such as Soft Q-learning and Soft Actor-Critic, recently showed state-of-the-art performance on a number of challenging reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. The regularized formulation modifies the standard RL…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-15 Elena Smirnova , Elvis Dohmatob

Continual learning aims to acquire new tasks while preserving performance on previously learned ones, but most methods struggle with catastrophic forgetting. Existing approaches typically treat all layers uniformly, often trading stability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Hengyi Wu , Zhenyi Wang , Heng Huang

Dynamic decision-making under distributional shifts is of fundamental interest in theory and applications of reinforcement learning: The distribution of the environment in which the data is collected can differ from that of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

It is well-known that information loss can occur in the classic and simple Q-learning algorithm. Entropy-based policy search methods were introduced to replace Q-learning and to design algorithms that are more robust against information…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-29 Tung D. Nguyen , Kathryn E. Kasmarik , Hussein A. Abbass

Direct policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning are a successful approach for a variety of reasons: they are model free, they directly optimize the performance metric of interest, and they allow for richly parameterized policies.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-14 Alekh Agarwal , Mikael Henaff , Sham Kakade , Wen Sun

Policy gradient algorithms have been widely applied to Markov decision processes and reinforcement learning problems in recent years. Regularization with various entropy functions is often used to encourage exploration and improve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-09 Haoya Li , Samarth Gupta , Hsiangfu Yu , Lexing Ying , Inderjit Dhillon

We use a reinforcement learning approach to reduce entropy production in a closed quantum system brought out of equilibrium. Our strategy makes use of an external control Hamiltonian and a policy gradient technique. Our approach bears no…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-02-21 Sofia Sgroi , G. Massimo Palma , Mauro Paternostro

Policy gradient methods are widely adopted reinforcement learning algorithms for tasks with continuous action spaces. These methods succeeded in many application domains, however, because of their notorious sample inefficiency their use…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-20 Davide Mambelli , Stephan Bongers , Onno Zoeter , Matthijs T. J. Spaan , Frans A. Oliehoek

In state of the art model-free off-policy deep reinforcement learning, a replay memory is used to store past experience and derive all network updates. Even if both state and action spaces are continuous, the replay memory only holds a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-16 Sabrina Hoppe , Marc Toussaint

Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, such as Q-learning, directly parameterize and update value functions or policies without explicitly modeling the environment. They are typically simpler, more flexible to use, and thus more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Chi Jin , Zeyuan Allen-Zhu , Sebastien Bubeck , Michael I. Jordan