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Related papers: Zap Q-Learning for Optimal Stopping Time Problems

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We propose a new simple and natural algorithm for learning the optimal Q-value function of a discounted-cost Markov Decision Process (MDP) when the transition kernels are unknown. Unlike the classical learning algorithms for MDPs, such as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-31 Dileep Kalathil , Vivek S. Borkar , Rahul Jain

The use of target networks is a common practice in deep reinforcement learning for stabilizing the training; however, theoretical understanding of this technique is still limited. In this paper, we study the so-called periodic Q-learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Donghwan Lee , Niao He

This paper establishes the first almost sure convergence rate and the first maximal concentration bound with exponential tails for general contractive stochastic approximation algorithms with Markovian noise. As a corollary, we also obtain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-22 Xiaochi Qian , Zixuan Xie , Xinyu Liu , Shangtong Zhang

Given a list of behaviors and associated parameterized controllers for solving different individual tasks, we study the problem of selecting an optimal sequence of coordinated behaviors in multi-robot systems for completing a given mission,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-09-16 Pietro Pierpaoli , Thinh T. Doan , Justin Romberg , Magnus Egerstedt

Detailed routing remains one of the most complex and time-consuming steps in modern physical design due to the challenges posed by shrinking feature sizes and stricter design rules. Prior detailed routers achieve state-of-the-art results by…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Afsara Khan , Austin Rovinski

This paper investigates the optimal ergodic sublinear convergence rate of the relaxed proximal point algorithm for solving monotone variational inequality problems. The exact worst case convergence rate is computed using the performance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-15 Guoyong Gu , Junfeng Yang

This paper is concerned with the design of algorithms based on systems of interacting particles to represent, approximate, and learn the optimal control law for reinforcement learning (RL). The primary contribution is that convergence rates…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-21 Anant A Joshi , Heng-Sheng Chang , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Prashant G Mehta , Sean P. Meyn

We consider a reinforcement learning setting in which the deployment environment is different from the training environment. Applying a robust Markov decision processes formulation, we extend the distributionally robust $Q$-learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

In this paper the connection between stochastic optimal control and reinforcement learning is investigated. Our main motivation is to apply importance sampling to sampling rare events which can be reformulated as an optimal control problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-16 Jannes Quer , Enric Ribera Borrell

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

Given a set of trajectories demonstrating the execution of a task safely in a constrained MDP with observable rewards but with unknown constraints and non-observable costs, we aim to find a policy that maximizes the likelihood of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 George Papadopoulos , George A. Vouros

This paper addresses the problem of learning optimal policies for satisfying signal temporal logic (STL) specifications by agents with unknown stochastic dynamics. The system is modeled as a Markov decision process, in which the states…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2016-09-26 Derya Aksaray , Austin Jones , Zhaodan Kong , Mac Schwager , Calin Belta

It is well known that the extension of Watkins' algorithm to general function approximation settings is challenging: does the projected Bellman equation have a solution? If so, is the solution useful in the sense of generating a good…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-11 Prashant G. Mehta , Sean P. Meyn

In this paper, we study gap-dependent regret guarantees for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning based on the entropic risk measure. We propose a novel definition of sub-optimality gaps, which we call cascaded gaps, and we discuss their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Yingjie Fei , Ruitu Xu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a class of artificial intelligence algorithms being used to design adaptive optimal controllers through online learning. This paper presents a model-free, real-time, data-efficient Q-learning-based algorithm…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-11 Ali Aalipour , Alireza Khani

We consider an optimal stopping time problem related with many models found in real options problems. The main goal of this work is to bring for the field of real options, different and more realistic pay-off functions, and negative…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-01-10 Manuel Guerra , Cláudia Nunes , Carlos Oliveira

This article provides a rigorous analysis of convergence and stability of Episodic Upside-Down Reinforcement Learning, Goal-Conditioned Supervised Learning and Online Decision Transformers. These algorithms performed competitively across…

This paper considers online optimization of a renewal-reward system. A controller performs a sequence of tasks back-to-back. Each task has a random vector of parameters, called the task type vector, that affects the task processing options…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-01 Michael J. Neely

This paper develops an unified framework to study finite-sample convergence guarantees of a large class of value-based asynchronous reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. We do this by first reformulating the RL algorithms as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Zaiwei Chen , Siva Theja Maguluri , Sanjay Shakkottai , Karthikeyan Shanmugam

Reinforcement learning with function approximation has recently achieved tremendous results in applications with large state spaces. This empirical success has motivated a growing body of theoretical work proposing necessary and sufficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-05 Daniel Kane , Sihan Liu , Shachar Lovett , Gaurav Mahajan