Related papers: The Gap Between Model-Based and Model-Free Methods…
Policy optimization has drawn increasing attention in reinforcement learning, particularly in the context of derivative-free methods for linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problems with unknown dynamics. This paper focuses on characterizing…
We consider the classic stochastic linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem under an infinite horizon average stage cost. By leveraging recent policy gradient methods from reinforcement learning, we obtain a first-order method that finds a…
We adapt reinforcement learning (RL) methods for continuous control to bridge the gap between complete ignorance and perfect knowledge of the environment. Our method, Partial Knowledge Least Squares Policy Iteration (PLSPI), takes…
Offline reinforcement learning (offline RL) considers problems where learning is performed using only previously collected samples and is helpful for the settings in which collecting new data is costly or risky. In model-based offline RL,…
Reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been shown to be capable of learning intelligent behavior in rich domains. However, this has largely been done in simulated domains without adequate focus on the process of building the simulator. In…
This paper studies the robustness of reinforcement learning algorithms to errors in the learning process. Specifically, we revisit the benchmark problem of discrete-time linear quadratic regulation (LQR) and study the long-standing open…
We investigate the problem of learning linear quadratic regulators (LQR) in a multi-task, heterogeneous, and model-free setting. We characterize the stability and personalization guarantees of a policy gradient-based (PG) model-agnostic…
Recent success in deep reinforcement learning for continuous control has been dominated by model-free approaches which, unlike model-based approaches, do not suffer from representational limitations in making assumptions about the world…
Policy gradient algorithms are widely used in reinforcement learning and belong to the class of approximate dynamic programming methods. This paper studies two key policy gradient algorithms, the Natural Policy Gradient and the Gauss-Newton…
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…
For over a decade, model-based reinforcement learning has been seen as a way to leverage control-based domain knowledge to improve the sample-efficiency of reinforcement learning agents. While model-based agents are conceptually appealing,…
Reinforcement learning (RL) can be a powerful alternative to classical control methods when standard model-based control is insufficient, e.g., when deriving a suitable model is intractable or impossible. In many cases, however, the choice…
We study reinforcement learning (RL) for a class of continuous-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control problems for diffusions, where states are scalar-valued and running control rewards are absent but volatilities of the state processes depend…
We propose a model-based reinforcement learning (RL) approach for noisy time-dependent gate optimization with improved sample complexity over model-free RL. Sample complexity is the number of controller interactions with the physical…
To further understand the underlying mechanism of various reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms and also to better use the optimization theory to make further progress in RL, many researchers begin to revisit the linear-quadratic regulator…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is used to directly design a control policy using data collected from the system. This paper considers the robustness of controllers trained via model-free RL. The discussion focuses on the standard model-based…
Model-free reinforcement learning attempts to find an optimal control action for an unknown dynamical system by directly searching over the parameter space of controllers. The convergence behavior and statistical properties of these…
Distributionally Robust Reinforcement Learning (DR-RL) aims to derive a policy optimizing the worst-case performance within a predefined uncertainty set. Despite extensive research, previous DR-RL algorithms have predominantly favored…
Reinforcement learning holds tremendous promise in accelerator controls. The primary goal of this paper is to show how this approach can be utilised on an operational level on accelerator physics problems. Despite the success of model-free…
Recent progress in reinforcement learning has led to remarkable performance in a range of applications, but its deployment in high-stakes settings remains quite rare. One reason is a limited understanding of the behavior of reinforcement…