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

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Novel advanced policy gradient (APG) methods, such as Trust Region policy optimization and Proximal policy optimization (PPO), have become the dominant reinforcement learning algorithms because of their ease of implementation and good…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-22 J. G. Dai , Mark Gluzman

This paper proposes a novel robust reinforcement learning framework for discrete-time linear systems with model mismatch that may arise from the sim-to-real gap. A key strategy is to invoke advanced techniques from control theory. Using the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-07 Leilei Cui , Tamer Başar , Zhong-Ping Jiang

Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) focuses on designing policies that achieve good performance under model uncertainties. The goal is to maximize the worst-case long-term discounted reward, where the data for RL comes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Saptarshi Mandal , Yashaswini Murthy , R. Srikant

Stochastic Approximation (SA) is a widely used algorithmic approach in various fields, including optimization and reinforcement learning (RL). Among RL algorithms, Q-learning is particularly popular due to its empirical success. In this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-26 Yixuan Zhang , Qiaomin Xie

We consider a general asynchronous Stochastic Approximation (SA) scheme featuring a weighted infinity-norm contractive operator, and prove a bound on its finite-time convergence rate on a single trajectory. Additionally, we specialize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-06 Guannan Qu , Adam Wierman

This paper aims at one-shot learning of deep neural nets, where a highly parallel setting is considered to address the algorithm calibration problem - selecting the best neural architecture and learning hyper-parameter values depending on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-21 Olivier Bousquet , Sylvain Gelly , Karol Kurach , Marc Schoenauer , Michele Sebag , Olivier Teytaud , Damien Vincent

The goal of this paper is to investigate new and simple convergence analysis of dynamic programming for linear quadratic regulator problem of discrete-time linear time-invariant systems. In particular, bounds on errors are given in terms of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-18 Donghwan Lee

In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of nonlinear systems with continuous state and action spaces. We present an episodic learning algorithm, where we for each episode use convex optimization to find a two-layer neural network…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-25 Ather Gattami

This paper considers a class of reinforcement learning problems, which involve systems with two types of states: stochastic and pseudo-stochastic. In such systems, stochastic states follow a stochastic transition kernel while the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-09 Honghao Wei , Xin Liu , Weina Wang , Lei Ying

In this note we propose a new approach towards solving numerically optimal stopping problems via reinforced regression based Monte Carlo algorithms. The main idea of the method is to reinforce standard linear regression algorithms in each…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-07-02 Denis Belomestny , John Schoenmakers , Vladimir Spokoiny , Bakhyt Zharkynbay

In this paper, two Q-learning (QL) methods are proposed and their convergence theories are established for addressing the model-free optimal control problem of general nonlinear continuous-time systems. By introducing the Q-function for…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2014-10-14 Biao Luo , Derong Liu , Tingwen Huang

We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm derived from a regularized linear-programming formulation of optimal control in MDPs. The method is closely related to the classic Relative Entropy Policy Search (REPS) algorithm of Peters…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Joan Bas-Serrano , Sebastian Curi , Andreas Krause , Gergely Neu

Off-policy deep reinforcement learning (RL) typically leverages replay buffers for reusing past experiences during learning. This can help improve sample efficiency when the collected data is informative and aligned with the learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Jiashun Liu , Johan Obando-Ceron , Pablo Samuel Castro , Aaron Courville , Ling Pan

This paper presents an inverse reinforcement learning~(IRL) framework for Bayesian stopping time problems. By observing the actions of a Bayesian decision maker, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition to identify if these actions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-29 Kunal Pattanayak , Vikram Krishnamurthy

In this paper, we use concepts from supervisory control theory of discrete event systems to propose a method to learn optimal control policies for a finite-state Markov Decision Process (MDP) in which (only) certain sequences of actions are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Arun Raman , Keerthan Shagrithaya , Shalabh Bhatnagar

This paper presents the concept of an adaptive safe padding that forces Reinforcement Learning (RL) to synthesise optimal control policies while ensuring safety during the learning process. Policies are synthesised to satisfy a goal,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening

To convey desired behavior to a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent, a designer must choose a reward function for the environment, arguably the most important knob designers have in interacting with RL agents. Although many reward functions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-01 Henry Sowerby , Zhiyuan Zhou , Michael L. Littman

Algorithms for solving \textit{nonlinear} fixed-point equations -- such as average-reward \textit{$Q$-learning} and \textit{TD-learning} -- often involve semi-norm contractions. Achieving parameter-free optimal convergence rates for these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Ankur Naskar , Gugan Thoppe , Vijay Gupta

Reinforcement learning studies how an agent should interact with an environment to maximize its cumulative reward. A standard way to study this question abstractly is to ask how many samples an agent needs from the environment to learn an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-12-21 Daochen Wang , Aarthi Sundaram , Robin Kothari , Ashish Kapoor , Martin Roetteler

Q-learning is known as one of the fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Its convergence has been the focus of extensive research over the past several decades. Recently, a new finitetime error bound and analysis for Q-learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-01-17 Donghwna Lee