Related papers: Convergence Guarantees of Policy Optimization Meth…
Recently, policy optimization for control purposes has received renewed attention due to the increasing interest in reinforcement learning. In this paper, we investigate the global convergence of gradient-based policy optimization methods…
Owing to the growth of interest in Reinforcement Learning in the last few years, gradient based policy control methods have been gaining popularity for Control problems as well. And rightly so, since gradient policy methods have the…
This research paper introduces a model-free optimal controller for discrete-time Markovian jump linear systems (MJLSs), employing principles from the methodology of reinforcement learning (RL). While Q-learning methods have demonstrated…
Markovian jump linear systems (MJLS) are an important class of dynamical systems that arise in many control applications. In this paper, we introduce the problem of controlling unknown (discrete-time) MJLS as a new benchmark for…
This paper will investigate the infinite horizon optimal control and stabilization problems for the Markov jump linear system (MJLS) subject to control input delay. Different from previous works, for the first time, the necessary and…
Real-world control applications often involve complex dynamics subject to abrupt changes or variations. Markov jump linear systems (MJS) provide a rich framework for modeling such dynamics. Despite an extensive history, theoretical…
Direct policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning and continuous control problems are a popular approach for a variety of reasons: 1) they are easy to implement without explicit knowledge of the underlying model 2) they are an…
In this paper, we consider the $H_{\infty}$ optimal control problem for a Markovian jump linear system (MJLS) over a lossy communication network. It is assumed that the controller communicates with each actuator through a different…
We investigate reinforcement learning in the setting of Markov decision processes for a large number of exchangeable agents interacting in a mean field manner. Applications include, for example, the control of a large number of robots…
We explore reinforcement learning methods for finding the optimal policy in the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem. In particular, we consider the convergence of policy gradient methods in the setting of known and unknown parameters.…
In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing the stability of positive semi-Markov jump linear systems. We specifically consider the problem of tuning the coefficients of the system matrices for maximizing the exponential decay rate of…
This paper studies an infinite horizon optimal control problem for discrete-time linear system and quadratic criteria, both with random parameters which are independent and identically distributed with respect to time. In this general…
We consider policy gradient algorithms for the indefinite least squares stationary optimal control, e.g., linear-quadratic-regulator (LQR) with indefinite state and input penalization matrices. Such a setup has important applications in…
We consider continuous-time, finite-horizon, optimal quadratic control of semi-Markov jump linear systems (S-MJLS), and develop principled approximations through Markov-like representations for the holding-time distributions. We adopt a…
Many applications -- including power systems, robotics, and economics -- involve a dynamical system interacting with a stochastic and hard-to-model environment. We adopt a reinforcement learning approach to control such systems.…
In this paper, we propose a new policy iteration algorithm to compute the value function and the optimal controls of continuous time stochastic control problems. The algorithm relies on successive approximations using linear-quadratic…
This paper investigates almost sure exponential stabilization of continuous-time Markov jump linear systems (MJLSs) under communication data-rate constraints by introducing sampling and quantization into the feedback control. Different from…
We develop a model-free approach to optimally control stochastic, Markovian systems subject to a reach-avoid constraint. Specifically, the state trajectory must remain within a safe set while reaching a target set within a finite time…
Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…
Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning. Yet, the nonconvexity of policy optimization poses significant challenges in understanding the global convergence of policy gradient methods. For a class of finite-horizon…