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Related papers: Reinforcement Learning with Non-Markovian Rewards

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We study model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in episodic non-stationary constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs), in which an agent aims to maximize the expected cumulative reward subject to a cumulative constraint on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-13 Honghao Wei , Arnob Ghosh , Ness Shroff , Lei Ying , Xingyu Zhou

Reward specification plays a central role in reinforcement learning (RL), guiding the agent's behavior. To express non-Markovian rewards, formalisms such as reward machines have been introduced to capture dependencies on histories. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Rajarshi Roy , Anirban Majumdar , Ritam Raha , David Parker , Marta Kwiatkowska

In dynamic programming (DP) and reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to act optimally in terms of expected long-term return by sequentially interacting with its environment modeled by a Markov decision process (MDP). More generally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Mastane Achab , Gergely Neu

This work studies offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) in a class of non-Markovian environments called Regular Decision Processes (RDPs). In RDPs, the unknown dependency of future observations and rewards from the past interactions can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Ahana Deb , Roberto Cipollone , Anders Jonsson , Alessandro Ronca , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

We study the setting of \emph{performative reinforcement learning} where the deployed policy affects both the reward, and the transition of the underlying Markov decision process. Prior work~\parencite{MTR23} has addressed this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

We study deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with delayed rewards. In many real-world tasks, instant rewards are often not readily accessible or even defined immediately after the agent performs actions. In this work, we first…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Beining Han , Zhizhou Ren , Zuofan Wu , Yuan Zhou , Jian Peng

Reinforcement Learning (RL) in environments with complex, history-dependent reward structures poses significant challenges for traditional methods. In this work, we introduce a novel approach that leverages automaton-based feedback to guide…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Mahyar Alinejad , Alvaro Velasquez , Yue Wang , George Atia

In reinforcement learning (RL), rewards of states are typically considered additive, and following the Markov assumption, they are $\textit{independent}$ of states visited previously. In many important applications, such as coverage…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-27 Manish Prajapat , Mojmír Mutný , Melanie N. Zeilinger , Andreas Krause

Designing incentives for an adapting population is a ubiquitous problem in a wide array of economic applications and beyond. In this work, we study how to design additional rewards to steer multi-agent systems towards desired policies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Jiawei Huang , Vinzenz Thoma , Zebang Shen , Heinrich H. Nax , Niao He

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) is a paradigm in which an RL agent learns to optimize a task using pair-wise preference-based feedback over trajectories, rather than explicit reward signals. While PbRL has demonstrated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-18 Wenhao Zhan , Masatoshi Uehara , Wen Sun , Jason D. Lee

We introduce learning and planning algorithms for average-reward MDPs, including 1) the first general proven-convergent off-policy model-free control algorithm without reference states, 2) the first proven-convergent off-policy model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Yi Wan , Abhishek Naik , Richard S. Sutton

Recently, we have struck the balance between the information freshness, in terms of age of information (AoI), experienced by users and energy consumed by sensors, by appropriately activating sensors to update their current status in caching…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-15 Chao Xu , Yiping Xie , Xijun Wang , Howard H. Yang , Dusit Niyato , Tony Q. S. Quek

This work tackles the problem of robust zero-shot planning in non-stationary stochastic environments. We study Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) evolving over time and consider Model-Based Reinforcement Learning algorithms in this setting.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-16 Erwan Lecarpentier , Emmanuel Rachelson

Mastering robotic manipulation skills through reinforcement learning (RL) typically requires the design of shaped reward functions. Recent developments in this area have demonstrated that using sparse rewards, i.e. rewarding the agent only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-12 Ozsel Kilinc , Giovanni Montana

While learning in an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), an agent should trade off exploration to discover new information about the MDP, and exploitation of the current knowledge to maximize the reward. Although the agent will…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-16 Evrard Garcelon , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Alessandro Lazaric , Matteo Pirotta

In reinforcement learning, the reward function on current state and action is widely used. When the objective is about the expectation of the (discounted) total reward only, it works perfectly. However, if the objective involves the total…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Shuai Ma , Jia Yuan Yu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a popular approach for robotic path planning in uncertain environments. However, the control policies trained for an RL agent crucially depend on user-defined, state-based reward functions. Poorly designed…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Anand Balakrishnan , Stefan Jakšić , Edgar A. Aguilar , Dejan Ničković , Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh

Current reinforcement learning methods fail if the reward function is imperfect, i.e. if the agent observes reward different from what it actually receives. We study this problem within the formalism of Corrupt Reward Markov Decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-02 Jason Mancuso , Tomasz Kisielewski , David Lindner , Alok Singh

We present the first model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm to synthesise policies for an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), such that a linear time property is satisfied. The given temporal property is converted into a Limit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-19 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening