Related papers: Multiple-Step Greedy Policies in Online and Approx…

The famous Policy Iteration algorithm alternates between policy improvement and policy evaluation. Implementations of this algorithm with several variants of the latter evaluation stage, e.g, $n$-step and trace-based returns, have been…

A common technique in reinforcement learning is to evaluate the value function from Monte Carlo simulations of a given policy, and use the estimated value function to obtain a new policy which is greedy with respect to the estimated value…

Finite-horizon lookahead policies are abundantly used in Reinforcement Learning and demonstrate impressive empirical success. Usually, the lookahead policies are implemented with specific planning methods such as Monte Carlo Tree Search…

Multi-step greedy policies have been extensively used in model-based reinforcement learning (RL), both when a model of the environment is available (e.g.,~in the game of Go) and when it is learned. In this paper, we explore their benefits…

Policy Mirror Descent (PMD) stands as a versatile algorithmic framework encompassing several seminal policy gradient algorithms such as natural policy gradient, with connections with state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms…

Search missions require motion planning and navigation methods for information gathering that continuously replan based on new observations of the robot's surroundings. Current methods for information gathering, such as Monte Carlo Tree…

Greedy algorithms are widely used for problems in machine learning such as feature selection and set function optimization. Unfortunately, for large datasets, the running time of even greedy algorithms can be quite high. This is because for…

Conventionally, random forests are built from "greedy" decision trees which each consider only one split at a time during their construction. The sub-optimality of greedy implementation has been well-known, yet mainstream adoption of more…

Real Time Dynamic Programming (RTDP) is an online algorithm based on Dynamic Programming (DP) that acts by 1-step greedy planning. Unlike DP, RTDP does not require access to the entire state space, i.e., it explicitly handles the…

Non-prehensile multi-object rearrangement is a robotic task of planning feasible paths and transferring multiple objects to their predefined target poses without grasping. It needs to consider how each object reaches the target and the…

A major problem in data augmentation is to ensure that the generated new samples cover the search space. This is a challenging problem and requires exploration for data augmentation policies to ensure their effectiveness in covering the…

Motivated by modern applications such as computerized adaptive testing, sequential rank aggregation, and heterogeneous data source selection, we study the problem of active sequential estimation, which involves adaptively selecting…

State-of-the-art efficient model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms typically act by iteratively solving empirical models, i.e., by performing \emph{full-planning} on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) built by the gathered…

Maneuver decision-making can be regarded as a Markov decision process and can be address by reinforcement learning. However, original reinforcement learning algorithms can hardly solve the maneuvering decision-making problem. One reason is…

This paper proposes a new algorithm for multiple sparse regression in high dimensions, where the task is to estimate the support and values of several (typically related) sparse vectors from a few noisy linear measurements. Our algorithm is…

Optimal policies in standard MDPs can be obtained using either value iteration or policy iteration. However, in the case of zero-sum Markov games, there is no efficient policy iteration algorithm; e.g., it has been shown that one has to…

A promising way to improve the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning is model-based methods, in which many explorations and evaluations can happen in the learned models to save real-world samples. However, when the learned model has a…

We propose a new concept named adaptive submodularity ratio to study the greedy policy for sequential decision making. While the greedy policy is known to perform well for a wide variety of adaptive stochastic optimization problems in…

We study a logistic model-based active learning procedure for binary classification problems, in which we adopt a batch subject selection strategy with a modified sequential experimental design method. Moreover, accompanying the proposed…

Policy gradient methods are powerful reinforcement learning algorithms and have been demonstrated to solve many complex tasks. However, these methods are also data-inefficient, afflicted with high variance gradient estimates, and frequently…