English
Related papers

Related papers: A Structure-aware Online Learning Algorithm for Ma…

200 papers

In dynamic programming (DP) and reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to act optimally in terms of expected long-term return by sequentially interacting with its environment modeled by a Markov decision process (MDP). More generally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Mastane Achab , Gergely Neu

Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-06 Vincent Corlay , Jean-Christophe Sibel

In this paper we design hybrid control policies for hybrid systems whose mathematical models are unknown. Our contributions are threefold. First, we propose a framework for modelling the hybrid control design problem as a single Markov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-09-03 Meet Gandhi , Atreyee Kundu , Shalabh Bhatnagar

The past decade has seen the rapid development of Reinforcement Learning, which acquires impressive performance with numerous training resources. However, one of the greatest challenges in RL is generalization efficiency (i.e.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-18 Qi Yang , Peng Yang , Ke Tang

Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Rene Carmona , Mathieu Lauriere

We study the offline data-driven sequential decision making problem in the framework of Markov decision process (MDP). In order to enhance the generalizability and adaptivity of the learned policy, we propose to evaluate each policy by a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-11 Zhengling Qi , Peng Liao

In this paper, we present an online reinforcement learning algorithm, called Renewal Monte Carlo (RMC), for infinite horizon Markov decision processes with a designated start state. RMC is a Monte Carlo algorithm and retains the advantages…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-05 Jayakumar Subramanian , Aditya Mahajan

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) approaches have shown successful results in solving a large variety of complex, structured, long-horizon problems. Nevertheless, a full theoretical understanding of this empirical evidence is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-05 Gianluca Drappo , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

This paper targets the efficient construction of a safety shield for decision making in scenarios that incorporate uncertainty. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are prominent models to capture such planning problems. Reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-11-26 Nils Jansen , Bettina Könighofer , Sebastian Junges , Alexandru C. Serban , Roderick Bloem

The infinite horizon setting is widely adopted for problems of reinforcement learning (RL). These invariably result in stationary policies that are optimal. In many situations, finite horizon control problems are of interest and for such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-21 Soumyajit Guin , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Safe Reinforcement Learning (RL) plays an important role in applying RL algorithms to safety-critical real-world applications, addressing the trade-off between maximizing rewards and adhering to safety constraints. This work introduces a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-16 Fan Yang , Wenxuan Zhou , Zuxin Liu , Ding Zhao , David Held

Risk-averse total-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) offer a promising framework for modeling and solving undiscounted infinite-horizon objectives. Existing model-based algorithms for risk measures like the entropic risk measure (ERM)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Xihong Su , Jia Lin Hau , Gersi Doko , Kishan Panaganti , Marek Petrik

In e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and TaoBao, ranking items in a search session is a typical multi-step decision-making problem. Learning to rank (LTR) methods have been widely applied to ranking problems. However, such methods often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-24 Yujing Hu , Qing Da , Anxiang Zeng , Yang Yu , Yinghui Xu

We propose an epoch-based reinforcement learning algorithm for infinite-horizon average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) that leverages a partial order over a policy class. In this structure, $\pi' \leq \pi$ if data collected under…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-07 Zhongjun Zhang , Shipra Agrawal , Ilan Lobel , Sean R. Sinclair , Christina Lee Yu

This paper addresses the problem of learning optimal control policies for systems with uncertain dynamics and high-level control objectives specified as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas. Uncertainty is considered in the workspace…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Yiannis Kantaros , Jun Wang

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Maximilian Nägele , Jan Olle , Thomas Fösel , Remmy Zen , Florian Marquardt

We study a primal-dual (PD) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for online constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). Despite its widespread practical use, the existing theoretical literature on PD-RL algorithms for this problem only…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are known to suffer from the curse of dimensionality, which refers to the fact that large-scale problems often lead to exponentially high sample complexity. A common solution is to use deep neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-13 Chenbei Lu , Laixi Shi , Zaiwei Chen , Chenye Wu , Adam Wierman

This paper addresses the problem of learning control policies for mobile robots, modeled as unknown Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), that are tasked with temporal logic missions, such as sequencing, coverage, or surveillance. The MDP…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-13 Yiannis Kantaros

We study computationally and statistically efficient reinforcement learning under the linear $Q^{\pi}$ realizability assumption, where any policy's $Q$-function is linear in a given state-action feature representation. Prior methods in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Yijing Ke , Zihan Zhang , Ruosong Wang