Related papers: Variance-reduced $Q$-learning is minimax optimal
We study time-inhomogeneous episodic reinforcement learning (RL) under general function approximation and sparse rewards. We design a new algorithm, Variance-weighted Optimistic $Q$-Learning (VO$Q$L), based on $Q$-learning and bound its…
Reinforcement learning (RL) agents have traditionally been tasked with maximizing the value function of a Markov decision process (MDP), either in continuous settings, with fixed discount factor $\gamma < 1$, or in episodic settings, with…
In many real world applications, reinforcement learning agents have to optimize multiple objectives while following certain rules or satisfying a list of constraints. Classical methods based on reward shaping, i.e. a weighted combination of…
Q-learning with neural network function approximation (neural Q-learning for short) is among the most prevalent deep reinforcement learning algorithms. Despite its empirical success, the non-asymptotic convergence rate of neural Q-learning…
Q-learning is a stochastic approximation version of the classic value iteration. The literature has established that Q-learning suffers from both maximization bias and slower convergence. Recently, multi-step algorithms have shown practical…
In data-driven decision-making in marketing, healthcare, and education, it is desirable to utilize a large amount of data from existing ventures to navigate high-dimensional feature spaces and address data scarcity in new ventures. We…
Q-learning has long been one of the most popular reinforcement learning algorithms, and theoretical analysis of Q-learning has been an active research topic for decades. Although researches on asymptotic convergence analysis of Q-learning…
We study model-free learning methods for the output-feedback Linear Quadratic (LQ) control problem in finite-horizon subject to subspace constraints on the control policy. Subspace constraints naturally arise in the field of distributed…
Although distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) has been widely examined in the past few years, very few studies investigate the validity of the obtained Q-function estimator in the distributional setting. To fully understand how the…
``Distribution shift'' is the main obstacle to the success of offline reinforcement learning. A learning policy may take actions beyond the behavior policy's knowledge, referred to as Out-of-Distribution (OOD) actions. The Q-values for…
We consider the problem of federated Q-learning, where $M$ agents aim to collaboratively learn the optimal Q-function of an unknown infinite-horizon Markov decision process with finite state and action spaces. We investigate the trade-off…
Q-functions are widely used in discrete-time learning and control to model future costs arising from a given control policy, when the initial state and input are given. Although some of their properties are understood, Q-functions…
We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation. For episodic time-inhomogeneous linear Markov decision processes (linear MDPs) whose transition probability can be parameterized as a linear function of a given…
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…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) provided we can only access its transition function through a generative sampling model that given any…
The paper introduces the first formulation of convex Q-learning for Markov decision processes with function approximation. The algorithms and theory rest on a relaxation of a dual of Manne's celebrated linear programming characterization of…
We establish optimal Statistical Query (SQ) lower bounds for robustly learning certain families of discrete high-dimensional distributions. In particular, we show that no efficient SQ algorithm with access to an $\epsilon$-corrupted binary…
We study model-free Q-learning in finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with stationary dynamics across episodes. We identify a central issue in nascent model-free posterior-sampling works: the reliance on delayed…
This work exploits action equivariance for representation learning in reinforcement learning. Equivariance under actions states that transitions in the input space are mirrored by equivalent transitions in latent space, while the map and…
Reinforcement learning has traditionally been studied with exponential discounting or the average reward setup, mainly due to their mathematical tractability. However, such frameworks fall short of accurately capturing human behavior, which…