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This paper investigates deceptive reinforcement learning for privacy preservation in model-free and continuous action space domains. In reinforcement learning, the reward function defines the agent's objective. In adversarial scenarios, an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Alan Lewis , Tim Miller

Reward design is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning (RL). A misspecified or poorly designed reward can result in low sample efficiency and undesired behaviors. In this paper, we propose the idea of programmatic reward design,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-10 Weichao Zhou , Wenchao Li

A recent line of work has focused on training machine learning (ML) models in the performative setting, i.e. when the data distribution reacts to the deployed model. The goal in this setting is to learn a model which both induces a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-15 Zachary Izzo , James Zou , Lexing Ying

This paper investigates the so-called reward-balancing methods, a novel class of algorithms for solving discounted-return reinforcement learning (RL) problems. These methods consist of iteratively adjusting the reward function to transform…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Simone Baroncini , Bahman Gharesifard , Giuseppe Notarstefano

There exist a number of reinforcement learning algorithms which learnby climbing the gradient of expected reward. Their long-runconvergence has been proved, even in partially observableenvironments with non-deterministic actions, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-14 Lex Weaver , Nigel Tao

In reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to perform a task by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback (a numerical reward) for its actions. However, the assumption that rewards are always observable is often not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Simone Parisi , Montaser Mohammedalamen , Alireza Kazemipour , Matthew E. Taylor , Michael Bowling

In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) with peak constraints, where an agent chooses a policy to optimize an objective and at the same time satisfy additional constraints. The agent has to take…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-09 Ather Gattami

When a person is not satisfied with how a robot performs a task, they can intervene to correct it. Reward learning methods enable the robot to adapt its reward function online based on such human input, but they rely on handcrafted…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-01-13 Andreea Bobu , Marius Wiggert , Claire Tomlin , Anca D. Dragan

Strong worst-case performance bounds for episodic reinforcement learning exist but fortunately in practice RL algorithms perform much better than such bounds would predict. Algorithms and theory that provide strong problem-dependent bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

In this paper, we consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with error states. Error states are those states entering which is undesirable or dangerous. We define the risk with respect to a policy as the probability of entering such a state…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-09-13 P. Geibel , F. Wysotzki

This work shows that value-aware model learning, known for its numerous theoretical benefits, is also practically viable for solving challenging continuous control tasks in prevalent model-based reinforcement learning algorithms. First, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-31 Nirbhay Modhe , Harish Kamath , Dhruv Batra , Ashwin Kalyan

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) aims to make agents more sample-efficient, adaptive, and explainable by learning an explicit model of the environment. While the capabilities of MBRL agents have significantly improved in recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-09 Ran Wei , Nathan Lambert , Anthony McDonald , Alfredo Garcia , Roberto Calandra

We consider a reinforcement learning setting introduced in (Maillard et al., NIPS 2011) where the learner does not have explicit access to the states of the underlying Markov decision process (MDP). Instead, she has access to several models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-09-16 Ronald Ortner , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Daniil Ryabko

We consider the problem of learning to behave optimally in a Markov Decision Process when a reward function is not specified, but instead we have access to a set of demonstrators of varying performance. We assume the demonstrators are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-01 Pablo Samuel Castro , Shijian Li , Daqing Zhang

Exogenous state variables and rewards can slow down reinforcement learning by injecting uncontrolled variation into the reward signal. We formalize exogenous state variables and rewards and identify conditions under which an MDP with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-06 Thomas G. Dietterich , George Trimponias , Zhitang Chen

Learning reward functions from demonstrations assumes that demonstrations provide adequate supervision over all features -- or task-relevant aspects of behavior. In practice, demonstrations are often imperfect: humans may under-emphasize…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Helena Merker , Nick Walker , Andreea Bobu

The problem of selecting the right state-representation in a reinforcement learning problem is considered. Several models (functions mapping past observations to a finite set) of the observations are given, and it is known that for at least…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-02-12 Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Rémi Munos , Daniil Ryabko

Misalignment between model predictions and intended usage can be detrimental for the deployment of computer vision models. The issue is exacerbated when the task involves complex structured outputs, as it becomes harder to design procedures…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-02-17 André Susano Pinto , Alexander Kolesnikov , Yuge Shi , Lucas Beyer , Xiaohua Zhai

In reinforcement learning (RL), agents continually interact with the environment and use the feedback to refine their behavior. To guide policy optimization, reward models are introduced as proxies of the desired objectives, such that when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Rui Yu , Shenghua Wan , Yucen Wang , Chen-Xiao Gao , Le Gan , Zongzhang Zhang , De-Chuan Zhan

Recent years have seen an emerging interest in the trustworthiness of machine learning-based agents in the wild, especially in robotics, to provide safety assurance for the industry. Obtaining behavioral guarantees for these agents remains…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Zhiyu An , Xianzhong Ding , Wan Du