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Dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) provide a principled framework for optimizing sequential decision-making in domains where decisions must adapt over time in response to individual trajectories, such as healthcare, education, and digital…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-30 Ruijia Zhang , Xiangyu Zhang , Zhengling Qi , Yue Wu , Yanxun Xu

Offline reinforcement learning (RL), also known as batch RL, aims to optimize policy from a large pre-recorded dataset without interaction with the environment. This setting offers the promise of utilizing diverse, pre-collected datasets to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Qiang He , Xinwen Hou

Improving the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning algorithms requires effective exploration. Following the principle of $\textit{optimism in the face of uncertainty}$ (OFU), we train a separate exploration policy to maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-23 Jiachen Li , Shuo Cheng , Zhenyu Liao , Huayan Wang , William Yang Wang , Qinxun Bai

Behavior Foundation Models (BFMs) are capable of retrieving high-performing policy for any reward function specified directly at test-time, commonly referred to as zero-shot reinforcement learning (RL). While this is a very efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Thomas Rupf , Marco Bagatella , Marin Vlastelica , Andreas Krause

Optimism about the poorly understood states and actions is the main driving force of exploration for many provably-efficient reinforcement learning algorithms. We propose optimism in the face of sensible value functions (OFVF)- a novel…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-19 Reazul H. Russel , Tianyi Gu , Marek Petrik

We study offline reinforcement learning (RL), which aims to learn an optimal policy based on a dataset collected a priori. Due to the lack of further interactions with the environment, offline RL suffers from the insufficient coverage of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-06 Ying Jin , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

This work proposes `PET', a novel pessimistic reward fine-tuning method, to learn a pessimistic reward model robust against reward hacking in offline reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Traditional reward modeling techniques…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Yinglun Xu , Hangoo Kang , Tarun Suresh , Yuxuan Wan , Gagandeep Singh

Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) faces a fundamental challenge of extrapolation errors caused by out-of-distribution (OOD) actions. Implicit Q-Learning (IQL) employs expectile regression to achieve in-sample learning. Nevertheless, IQL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Xinchen Han , Hossam Afifi , Michel Marot

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) is a compelling paradigm to extend RL's practical utility by leveraging pre-collected, static datasets, thereby avoiding the limitations associated with collecting online interactions. The major…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Yutaka Shimizu , Joey Hong , Sergey Levine , Masayoshi Tomizuka

We analyze the efficiency of parallelization and restart mechanisms for stochastic simulations in model-free settings, where the underlying system dynamics are unknown. Such settings are common in Reinforcement Learning (RL) and rare event…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-07 Ernesto Garcia , Paola Bermolen , Matthieu Jonckheere , Seva Shneer

We introduce a novel learning and planning framework that replaces traditional reward-based optimisation with constructive logical inference. In our model, actions, transitions, and goals are represented as logical propositions, and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Andrei T. Patrascu

Risk-averse Constrained Reinforcement Learning (RaCRL) aims to learn policies that minimise the likelihood of rare and catastrophic constraint violations caused by an environment's inherent randomness. In general, risk-aversion leads to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-28 James McCarthy , Radu Marinescu , Elizabeth Daly , Ivana Dusparic

Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) is unquestionably a robust framework to train autonomous agents in a wide variety of disciplines. However, traditional deep and shallow model-free RL algorithms suffer from low sample efficiency and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-05 Per-Arne Andersen , Ole-Christoffer Granmo , Morten Goodwin

The exploration-exploitation dilemma has been an intriguing and unsolved problem within the framework of reinforcement learning. "Optimism in the face of uncertainty" and model building play central roles in advanced exploration methods.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2008-10-21 István Szita , András Lőrincz

We present an optimistic Q-learning algorithm for regret minimization in average reward reinforcement learning under an additional assumption on the underlying MDP that for all policies, the time to visit some frequent state $s_0$ is finite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Priyank Agrawal , Shipra Agrawal

We address the challenge of efficient exploration in model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), where the system dynamics are unknown and the RL agent must learn directly from online interactions. We propose Scalable and Optimistic MBRL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Bhavya Sukhija , Lenart Treven , Carmelo Sferrazza , Florian Dörfler , Pieter Abbeel , Andreas Krause

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been able to solve hard problems such as playing Atari games or solving the game of Go, with a unified approach. Yet modern deep RL approaches are still not widely used in real-world applications. One reason…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-08 Achraf Azize , Othman Gaizi

Learning complex robot behaviors through interaction requires structured exploration. Planning should target interactions with the potential to optimize long-term performance, while only reducing uncertainty where conducive to this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Tim Seyde , Wilko Schwarting , Sertac Karaman , Daniela Rus

Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) promises the recovery of optimal policies from static datasets, yet it remains susceptible to the overestimation of out-of-distribution (OOD) actions, particularly in fractured and sparse data manifolds.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Sarthak Wanjari

Recent advance in deep offline reinforcement learning (RL) has made it possible to train strong robotic agents from offline datasets. However, depending on the quality of the trained agents and the application being considered, it is often…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-11-02 Seunghyun Lee , Younggyo Seo , Kimin Lee , Pieter Abbeel , Jinwoo Shin