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Robust reinforcement learning is essential for deploying reinforcement learning algorithms in real-world scenarios where environmental uncertainty predominates. Traditional robust reinforcement learning often depends on rectangularity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Adil Zouitine , David Bertoin , Pierre Clavier , Matthieu Geist , Emmanuel Rachelson

Learning a transition model via Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) followed by planning inside the learned model is perhaps the most standard and simplest Model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework. In this work, we show that such a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Zhiyong Wang , Dongruo Zhou , John C. S. Lui , Wen Sun

In this paper, we consider the contextual variant of the MNL-Bandit problem. More specifically, we consider a dynamic set optimization problem, where a decision-maker offers a subset (assortment) of products to a consumer and observes the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Priyank Agrawal , Theja Tulabandhula , Vashist Avadhanula

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

We study the multinomial logit (MNL) contextual bandit problem for sequential assortment selection. Although most existing research assumes utility functions to be linear in item features, this linearity assumption restricts the modeling of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Taehyun Hwang , Dahngoon Kim , Min-hwan Oh

We study model-based reinforcement learning in an unknown finite communicating Markov decision process. We propose a simple algorithm that leverages a variance based confidence interval. We show that the proposed algorithm, UCRL-V, achieves…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-12 Aristide Tossou , Debabrota Basu , Christos Dimitrakakis

This paper concerns the central issues of model robustness and sample efficiency in offline reinforcement learning (RL), which aims to learn to perform decision making from history data without active exploration. Due to uncertainties and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Christoph Dann , Teodor V. Marinov , Mehryar Mohri , Julian Zimmert

Learning complex robot behavior through interactions with the environment necessitates principled exploration. Effective strategies should prioritize exploring regions of the state-action space that maximize rewards, with optimistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Jasmine Bayrooti , Carl Henrik Ek , Amanda Prorok

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) has been widely adapted due to its sample efficiency. However, existing worst-case regret analysis typically requires optimistic planning, which is not realistic in general. In contrast, motivated…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-10 Lingxiao Wang , Ping Li

Model-based offline reinforcement learning (RL) aims to find highly rewarding policy, by leveraging a previously collected static dataset and a dynamics model. While the dynamics model learned through reuse of the static dataset, its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-01 Kaiyang Guo , Yunfeng Shao , Yanhui Geng

We address the issue of safety in reinforcement learning. We pose the problem in an episodic framework of a constrained Markov decision process. Existing results have shown that it is possible to achieve a reward regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-26 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

In real-world tasks, reinforcement learning (RL) agents frequently encounter situations that are not present during training time. To ensure reliable performance, the RL agents need to exhibit robustness against worst-case situations. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-19 Sebastian Curi , Ilija Bogunovic , Andreas Krause

Optimistic initialisation is an effective strategy for efficient exploration in reinforcement learning (RL). In the tabular case, all provably efficient model-free algorithms rely on it. However, model-free deep RL algorithms do not use…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Tabish Rashid , Bei Peng , Wendelin Böhmer , Shimon Whiteson

The Adversarial Markov Decision Process (AMDP) is a learning framework that deals with unknown and varying tasks in decision-making applications like robotics and recommendation systems. A major limitation of the AMDP formalism, however, is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-06 Sang Bin Moon , Abolfazl Hashemi

We study the problem of nonepisodic reinforcement learning (RL) for nonlinear dynamical systems, where the system dynamics are unknown and the RL agent has to learn from a single trajectory, i.e., without resets. We propose Nonepisodic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Bhavya Sukhija , Lenart Treven , Florian Dörfler , Stelian Coros , Andreas Krause

This paper studies model-based bandit and reinforcement learning (RL) with nonlinear function approximations. We propose to study convergence to approximate local maxima because we show that global convergence is statistically intractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-04 Kefan Dong , Jiaqi Yang , Tengyu Ma

In recent years, significant attention has been directed towards learning average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). However, existing algorithms either suffer from sub-optimal regret guarantees or computational inefficiencies. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Victor Boone , Zihan Zhang

We propose a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm inspired by the popular randomized least squares value iteration (RLSVI) algorithm as well as the optimism principle. Unlike existing upper-confidence-bound (UCB) based approaches,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Haque Ishfaq , Qiwen Cui , Viet Nguyen , Alex Ayoub , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Doina Precup , Lin F. Yang

Recent advances in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) have shown that KL-regularization plays a pivotal role in improving the efficiency of RL fine-tuning for large language models (LLMs). Despite its empirical advantage, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-12 Heyang Zhao , Chenlu Ye , Wei Xiong , Quanquan Gu , Tong Zhang