Related papers: A Function Approximation Method for Model-based Hi…
Workforce optimization plays a crucial role in efficient organizational operations where decision-making may span several different administrative and time scales. For instance, dispatching personnel to immediate service requests while…
We consider least squares approximation of a function of one variable by a continuous, piecewise-linear approximand that has a small number of breakpoints. This problem was notably considered by Bellman who proposed an approximate algorithm…
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) infers a reward function from demonstrations, allowing for policy improvement and generalization. However, despite much recent interest in IRL, little work has been done to understand the minimum set of…
In this paper we argue for the fundamental importance of the value distribution: the distribution of the random return received by a reinforcement learning agent. This is in contrast to the common approach to reinforcement learning which…
In the field of reinforcement learning there has been recent progress towards safety and high-confidence bounds on policy performance. However, to our knowledge, no practical methods exist for determining high-confidence policy performance…
Cyber-physical systems, such as mobile robots, must respond adaptively to dynamic operating conditions. Effective operation of these systems requires that sensing and actuation tasks are performed in a timely manner. Additionally, execution…
We study the problem of deployment efficient reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation under the \emph{reward-free} exploration setting. This is a well-motivated problem because deploying new policies is costly in…
Value function approximation has demonstrated phenomenal empirical success in reinforcement learning (RL). Nevertheless, despite a handful of recent progress on developing theory for RL with linear function approximation, the understanding…
We propose a new perspective on representation learning in reinforcement learning based on geometric properties of the space of value functions. We leverage this perspective to provide formal evidence regarding the usefulness of value…
With the impact of real-time processing being realized in the recent past, the need for efficient implementations of reinforcement learning algorithms has been on the rise. Albeit the numerous advantages of Bellman equations utilized in RL…
This work considers two distinct settings: imitation learning and goal-conditioned reinforcement learning. In either case, effective solutions require the agent to reliably reach a specified state (a goal), or set of states (a…
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can learn complex policies to optimize agent operation over time. RL algorithms have shown promising results in solving complicated problems in recent years. However, their application on…
The Bellman equation and its continuous form, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, are ubiquitous in reinforcement learning and control theory. However, these equations become intractable for high-dimensional or nonlinear systems. This…
Learning near-optimal behaviour from an expert's demonstrations typically relies on the assumption that the learner knows the features that the true reward function depends on. In this paper, we study the problem of learning from…
Methods for learning from demonstration (LfD) have shown success in acquiring behavior policies by imitating a user. However, even for a single task, LfD may require numerous demonstrations. For versatile agents that must learn many tasks…
Deep reinforcement learning has achieved impressive successes yet often requires a very large amount of interaction data. This result is perhaps unsurprising, as using complicated function approximation often requires more data to fit, and…
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…
Although recent model-free reinforcement learning algorithms have been shown to be capable of mastering complicated decision-making tasks, the sample complexity of these methods has remained a hurdle to utilizing them in many real-world…
Imitation learning (IL) is a framework that learns to imitate expert behavior from demonstrations. Recently, IL shows promising results on high dimensional and control tasks. However, IL typically suffers from sample inefficiency in terms…
Designing an effective reward function has long been a challenge in reinforcement learning, particularly for complex tasks in unstructured environments. To address this, various learning paradigms have emerged that leverage different forms…