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Temporal-difference (TD) learning is an important field in reinforcement learning. Sarsa and Q-Learning are among the most used TD algorithms. The Q($\sigma$) algorithm (Sutton and Barto (2017)) unifies both. This paper extends the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-11-07 Markus Dumke

Multistep returns, such as $n$-step returns and $\lambda$-returns, are commonly used to improve the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning (RL) methods. The variance of the multistep returns becomes the limiting factor in their length;…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Brett Daley , Martha White , Marlos C. Machado

Deep Q-Learning (DQL), a family of temporal difference algorithms for control, employs three techniques collectively known as the `deadly triad' in reinforcement learning: bootstrapping, off-policy learning, and function approximation.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-22 Joshua Achiam , Ethan Knight , Pieter Abbeel

There is increasing interest in data-driven approaches for recommending optimal treatment strategies in many chronic disease management and critical care applications. Reinforcement learning methods are well-suited to this sequential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-14 Milashini Nambiar , Supriyo Ghosh , Priscilla Ong , Yu En Chan , Yong Mong Bee , Pavitra Krishnaswamy

The variable and unpredictable load demands in hybrid agricultural tractors make it difficult to design optimal rule-based energy management strategies, motivating the use of adaptive, learning-based control. However, existing approaches…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-06 Hend Abououf , Sidra Ghayour Bhatti , Qadeer Ahmed

Compared to on-policy counterparts, off-policy model-free deep reinforcement learning can improve data efficiency by repeatedly using the previously gathered data. However, off-policy learning becomes challenging when the discrepancy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Baturay Saglam , Dogan C. Cicek , Furkan B. Mutlu , Suleyman S. Kozat

Experience replay is central to off-policy algorithms in deep reinforcement learning (RL), but there remain significant gaps in our understanding. We therefore present a systematic and extensive analysis of experience replay in Q-learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-15 William Fedus , Prajit Ramachandran , Rishabh Agarwal , Yoshua Bengio , Hugo Larochelle , Mark Rowland , Will Dabney

Deep Q-Networks (DQNs) estimate future returns by learning from transitions sampled from a replay buffer. However, the target updates in DQN often rely on next states generated by actions from past, potentially suboptimal, policy. As a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Lipeng Zu , Hansong Zhou , Xiaonan Zhang

High variances in reinforcement learning have shown impeding successful convergence and hurting task performance. As reward signal plays an important role in learning behavior, multi-step methods have been considered to mitigate the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-21 Junmin Zhong , Ruofan Wu , Jennie Si

Off-policy learning from multistep returns is crucial for sample-efficient reinforcement learning, but counteracting off-policy bias without exacerbating variance is challenging. Classically, off-policy bias is corrected in a per-decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Brett Daley , Martha White , Christopher Amato , Marlos C. Machado

Deep Q-learning Network (DQN) is a successful way which combines reinforcement learning with deep neural networks and leads to a widespread application of reinforcement learning. One challenging problem when applying DQN or other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-19 Zhe Zhang , Yukun Zou , Junjie Lai , Qing Xu

Off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) using a fixed offline dataset of logged interactions is an important consideration in real world applications. This paper studies offline RL using the DQN replay dataset comprising the entire replay…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-25 Rishabh Agarwal , Dale Schuurmans , Mohammad Norouzi

Deep Q Network (DQN) has several limitations when applied in planning a path in environment with a number of dilemmas according to our experiment. The reward function may be hard to model, and successful experience transitions are difficult…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-07-26 Fei Zhang , Chaochen Gu , Feng Yang

We know from reinforcement learning theory that temporal difference learning can fail in certain cases. Sutton and Barto (2018) identify a deadly triad of function approximation, bootstrapping, and off-policy learning. When these three…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-12-07 Hado van Hasselt , Yotam Doron , Florian Strub , Matteo Hessel , Nicolas Sonnerat , Joseph Modayil

Off-policy reinforcement learning with eligibility traces is challenging because of the discrepancy between target policy and behavior policy. One common approach is to measure the difference between two policies in a probabilistic way,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-20 Longxiang Shi , Shijian Li , Longbing Cao , Long Yang , Gang Pan

In order to solve the problem of frequent deceleration of unmanned vehicles when approaching obstacles, this article uses a Deep Q-Network (DQN) and its extension, the Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN), to develop a local navigation system that…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-04-29 Hao Liu , Yi Shen , Wenjing Zhou , Yuelin Zou , Chang Zhou , Shuyao He

Deep reinforcement learning is a technique for solving problems in a variety of environments, ranging from Atari video games to stock trading. This method leverages deep neural network models to make decisions based on observations of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-13 Anthony Dowling

We present a novel definition of the reinforcement learning state, actions and reward function that allows a deep Q-network (DQN) to learn to control an optimization hyperparameter. Using Q-learning with experience replay, we train two DQNs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-06-21 Samantha Hansen

Several real-world scenarios, such as remote control and sensing, are comprised of action and observation delays. The presence of delays degrades the performance of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, often to such an extent that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-18 Somjit Nath , Mayank Baranwal , Harshad Khadilkar

A convenient approach to optimally solving combinatorial optimization tasks is the Branch-and-Bound method. Its branching heuristic can be learned to solve a large set of similar tasks. The promising results here are achieved by the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 D. Sorokin , A. Kostin , L. Savchenko , G. Gusev , A. V. Savchenko