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We propose a robust Q-learning algorithm for Markov decision processes under model uncertainty when each state-action pair is associated with a finite ambiguity set of candidate transition kernels. This finite-measure framework enables…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Julian Sester , Cécile Decker

Dynamic decision-making under distributional shifts is of fundamental interest in theory and applications of reinforcement learning: The distribution of the environment in which the data is collected can differ from that of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

Sample complexity bounds are a common performance metric in the Reinforcement Learning literature. In the discounted cost, infinite horizon setting, all of the known bounds have a factor that is a polynomial in $1/(1-\gamma)$, where $\gamma…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-09 Adithya M. Devraj , Sean P. Meyn

In this paper, for POMDPs, we provide the convergence of a Q learning algorithm for control policies using a finite history of past observations and control actions, and, consequentially, we establish near optimality of such limit Q…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-27 Ali Devran Kara , Serdar Yuksel

Soft Q-learning is a variation of Q-learning designed to solve entropy regularized Markov decision problems where an agent aims to maximize the entropy regularized value function. Despite its empirical success, there have been limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Narim Jeong , Donghwan Lee

Acceleration is an increasingly common theme in the stochastic optimization literature. The two most common examples are Nesterov's method, and Polyak's momentum technique. In this paper two new algorithms are introduced for root finding…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-07 Adithya M. Devraj , Ana Bušić , Sean Meyn

Q-learning is known as one of the fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Its convergence has been the focus of extensive research over the past several decades. Recently, a new finitetime error bound and analysis for Q-learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-01-17 Donghwna Lee

The $Q$-learning algorithm is a simple and widely-used stochastic approximation scheme for reinforcement learning, but the basic protocol can exhibit instability in conjunction with function approximation. Such instability can be observed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-03 Andrea Zanette , Martin J. Wainwright

Reinforcement learning algorithms often require finiteness of state and action spaces in Markov decision processes (MDPs) (also called controlled Markov chains) and various efforts have been made in the literature towards the applicability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-08 Ali Devran Kara , Naci Saldi , Serdar Yüksel

We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes with continuous state spaces, where data are generated online from a single trajectory under a Markovian behavior policy. To avoid maintaining an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Shengbo Wang

Q-learning is a popular reinforcement learning algorithm. This algorithm has however been studied and analysed mainly in the infinite horizon setting. There are several important applications which can be modeled in the framework of finite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-09 Vivek VP , Dr. Shalabh Bhatnagar

Motivated by applications in reinforcement learning (RL), we study a nonlinear stochastic approximation (SA) algorithm under Markovian noise, and establish its finite-sample convergence bounds under various stepsizes. Specifically, we show…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-27 Zaiwei Chen , Sheng Zhang , Thinh T. Doan , John-Paul Clarke , Siva Theja Maguluri

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning promises, among other benefits, to efficiently capture and utilize the temporal structure of a decision-making problem and to enhance continual learning capabilities, but theoretical guarantees lag behind…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Massimiliano Manenti , Andrea Iannelli

When the data used for reinforcement learning (RL) are collected by multiple agents in a distributed manner, federated versions of RL algorithms allow collaborative learning without the need for agents to share their local data. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-14 Jiin Woo , Gauri Joshi , Yuejie Chi

Full-sampling (e.g., Q-learning) and pure-expectation (e.g., Expected Sarsa) algorithms are efficient and frequently used techniques in reinforcement learning. Q$(\sigma,\lambda)$ is the first approach unifies them with eligibility trace…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-09 Long Yang , Yu Zhang , Qian Zheng , Pengfei Li , Gang Pan

Greedy-GQ is an off-policy two timescale algorithm for optimal control in reinforcement learning. This paper develops the first finite-sample analysis for the Greedy-GQ algorithm with linear function approximation under Markovian noise. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-21 Yue Wang , Shaofeng Zou

Score-based and flow-based generative models exhibit remarkable expressive capacity in capturing complex distributions, and have been extensively deployed in tasks ranging from image generation to reinforcement learning. Nevertheless, these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Yiyan , Liang , Sifei Liu , Weitong Zhang

Consider a Markov decision process (MDP) that admits a set of state-action features, which can linearly express the process's probabilistic transition model. We propose a parametric Q-learning algorithm that finds an approximate-optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-07 Lin F. Yang , Mengdi Wang

Q-learning is a popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm which is widely used in practice with function approximation (Mnih et al., 2015). In contrast, existing theoretical results are pessimistic about Q-learning. For example, (Baird,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-20 Naman Agarwal , Syomantak Chaudhuri , Prateek Jain , Dheeraj Nagaraj , Praneeth Netrapalli

Asynchronous protocols have been shown to improve the scalability of federated learning (FL) with a massive number of clients. Meanwhile, momentum-based methods can achieve the best model quality in synchronous FL. However, naively applying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-10 Tao Yu , Congzheng Song , Jianyu Wang , Mona Chitnis