Related papers: Q-learning with UCB Exploration is Sample Efficien…
We present a new algorithm for imitation learning in infinite horizon linear MDPs dubbed ILARL which greatly improves the bound on the number of trajectories that the learner needs to sample from the environment. In particular, we remove…
We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation and adversarially changing cost functions, a setup that has mostly been considered under simplifying assumptions such as full information feedback or exploratory…
Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms such as Q-learning [Watkins, Dayan 92] have been widely used in practice and can achieve human level performance in applications such as video games [Mnih et al. 15]. Recently, equipped with…
Data selection is essential for any data-based optimization technique, such as Reinforcement Learning. State-of-the-art sampling strategies for the experience replay buffer improve the performance of the Reinforcement Learning agent.…
We introduce and analyse two algorithms for exploration-exploitation in discrete and continuous Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) based on exploration bonuses. SCAL$^+$ is a variant of SCAL (Fruit et al., 2018) that performs efficient…
Recent studies have shown that episodic reinforcement learning (RL) is no harder than bandits when the total reward is bounded by $1$, and proved regret bounds that have a polylogarithmic dependence on the planning horizon $H$. However, it…
We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon average-reward settings with linear MDPs. Previous work addresses this problem by approximating the average-reward setting by discounted setting and employing a value iteration-based…
We prove new upper and lower bounds for sample complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of an infinite-horizon average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) given access to a generative model. When the mixing time of the…
We study the reinforcement learning problem for discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under the tabular setting. We propose a model-based algorithm named UCBVI-$\gamma$, which is based on the \emph{optimism in the face of uncertainty…
Exploration is a key challenge in Reinforcement Learning, especially in long-horizon, deceptive and sparse-reward environments. For such applications, population-based approaches have proven effective. Methods such as Quality-Diversity…
Analyzing the Markov decision process (MDP) with continuous state spaces is generally challenging. A recent interesting work \cite{shah2018q} solves MDP with bounded continuous state space by a nearest neighbor $Q$ learning approach, which…
We propose a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm inspired by the popular randomized least squares value iteration (RLSVI) algorithm as well as the optimism principle. Unlike existing upper-confidence-bound (UCB) based approaches,…
We study an exploration method for model-free RL that generalizes the counter-based exploration bonus methods and takes into account long term exploratory value of actions rather than a single step look-ahead. We propose a model-free RL…
Modern tasks in reinforcement learning have large state and action spaces. To deal with them efficiently, one often uses predefined feature mapping to represent states and actions in a low-dimensional space. In this paper, we study…
Stochastic multi-armed bandits (MABs) provide a fundamental reinforcement learning model to study sequential decision making in uncertain environments. The upper confidence bounds (UCB) algorithm gave birth to the renaissance of bandit…
In the optimization of dynamical systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers a model-free approach to the problem, where the…
We study model-based reinforcement learning with non-linear function approximation where the transition function of the underlying Markov decision process (MDP) is given by a multinomial logistic (MNL) model. We develop a provably efficient…
This paper presents the first non-asymptotic result showing that a model-free algorithm can achieve a logarithmic cumulative regret for episodic tabular reinforcement learning if there exists a strictly positive sub-optimality gap in the…
We study the exploration problem with approximate linear action-value functions in episodic reinforcement learning under the notion of low inherent Bellman error, a condition normally employed to show convergence of approximate value…
We propose a novel variant of the UCB algorithm (referred to as Efficient-UCB-Variance (EUCBV)) for minimizing cumulative regret in the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) setting. EUCBV incorporates the arm elimination strategy proposed in…