Related papers: Is Q-learning Provably Efficient?
Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is inherently a reactive method, operating under the assumption that it starts with no prior knowledge of the system and entirely depends on trial-and-error for learning. This approach faces several…
Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) works well when experience can be collected cheaply and model-based RL is effective when system dynamics can be modeled accurately. However, both assumptions can be violated in real world problems such…
Reinforcement learning (RL) promises a framework for near-universal problem-solving. In practice however, RL algorithms are often tailored to specific benchmarks, relying on carefully tuned hyperparameters and algorithmic choices. Recently,…
Recently, model-free reinforcement learning has attracted research attention due to its simplicity, memory and computation efficiency, and the flexibility to combine with function approximation. In this paper, we propose Exploration…
In this work, we propose three efficient restart paradigms for model-free non-stationary reinforcement learning (RL). We identify two core issues with the restart design of Mao et al. (2022)'s RestartQ-UCB algorithm: (1) complete…
We take initial steps in studying PAC-MDP algorithms with limited adaptivity, that is, algorithms that change its exploration policy as infrequently as possible during regret minimization. This is motivated by the difficulty of running…
We study model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in episodic non-stationary constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs), in which an agent aims to maximize the expected cumulative reward subject to a cumulative constraint on the…
While quantum reinforcement learning (RL) has attracted a surge of attention recently, its theoretical understanding is limited. In particular, it remains elusive how to design provably efficient quantum RL algorithms that can address the…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a classical tool to solve network control or policy optimization problems in unknown environments. The original Q-learning suffers from performance and complexity challenges across very large networks. Herein,…
Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) generally suffers from poor sample complexity, mostly due to the need to exhaustively explore the state-action space to find well-performing policies. On the other hand, we postulate that expert…
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…
The development of machine learning algorithms has been gathering relevance to address the increasing modelling complexity of manufacturing decision-making problems. Reinforcement learning is a methodology with great potential due to the…
Model-free reinforcement learning has been successfully applied to a range of challenging problems, and has recently been extended to handle large neural network policies and value functions. However, the sample complexity of model-free…
Reinforcement learning (RL) solves sequential decision-making problems via a trial-and-error process interacting with the environment. While RL achieves outstanding success in playing complex video games that allow huge trial-and-error,…
Reinforcement learning (RL) so far has limited real-world applications. One key challenge is that typical RL algorithms heavily rely on a reset mechanism to sample proper initial states; these reset mechanisms, in practice, are expensive to…
Reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) is a framework which is suitable for both the batch RL setting and the setting where there are many reward functions of interest. During the exploration phase, an agent collects samples without using…
Training sophisticated agents for optimal decision-making under uncertainty has been key to the rapid development of modern autonomous systems across fields. Notably, model-free reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled decision-making agents…
Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) holds promise for data-efficiency by planning with model-generated experience in addition to learning with experience from the environment. However, in complex or changing environments, models in…
Modern reinforcement learning (RL) often faces an enormous state-action space. Existing analytical results are typically for settings with a small number of state-actions, or simple models such as linearly modeled Q-functions. To derive…
Motivated by the episodic version of the classical inventory control problem, we propose a new Q-learning-based algorithm, Elimination-Based Half-Q-Learning (HQL), that enjoys improved efficiency over existing algorithms for a wide variety…