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The problem of constrained reinforcement learning (CRL) holds significant importance as it provides a framework for addressing critical safety satisfaction concerns in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). However, with the introduction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-24 Chengbin Xuan , Feng Zhang , Faliang Yin , Hak-Keung Lam

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods for large-scale reinforcement learning, and their empirical success has prompted several works that develop the foundation of their global convergence theory. However, prior works…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Junzi Zhang , Jongho Kim , Brendan O'Donoghue , Stephen Boyd

We study offline Reinforcement Learning in large infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the reward and transition models are linearly realizable under a known feature map. Starting from the classic linear-program…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Gergely Neu , Nneka Okolo

Batch Reinforcement Learning (Batch RL) consists in training a policy using trajectories collected with another policy, called the behavioural policy. Safe policy improvement (SPI) provides guarantees with high probability that the trained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-12 Kimia Nadjahi , Romain Laroche , Rémi Tachet des Combes

We study finite-horizon offline reinforcement learning (RL) with function approximation for both policy evaluation and policy optimization. Prior work established that statistically efficient learning is impossible for either of these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Volodymyr Tkachuk , Csaba Szepesvári , Xiaoqi Tan

Many popular reinforcement learning problems (e.g., navigation in a maze, some Atari games, mountain car) are instances of the episodic setting under its stochastic shortest path (SSP) formulation, where an agent has to achieve a goal state…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-18 Jean Tarbouriech , Evrard Garcelon , Michal Valko , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

Safe reinforcement learning (Safe RL) refers to a class of techniques that aim to prevent RL algorithms from violating constraints in the process of decision-making and exploration during trial and error. In this paper, a novel model-free…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-08-14 Homayoun Honari , Mehran Ghafarian Tamizi , Homayoun Najjaran

Policy gradient methods, where one searches for the policy of interest by maximizing the value functions using first-order information, become increasingly popular for sequential decision making in reinforcement learning, games, and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-10 Shicong Cen , Yuejie Chi

Policy gradient methods hold great potential for solving complex continuous control tasks. Still, their training efficiency can be improved by exploiting structure within the optimization problem. Recent work indicates that supervised…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Jan Schneider , Pierre Schumacher , Simon Guist , Le Chen , Daniel Häufle , Bernhard Schölkopf , Dieter Büchler

Order dispatch is a critical task in ride-sharing systems with Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), directly influencing efficiency and profits. Recently, Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) has emerged as a promising solution to this problem…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Zijian Zhao , Sen Li

We study the optimal sample complexity in large-scale Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems with policy space generalization, i.e. the agent has a prior knowledge that the optimal policy lies in a known policy space. Existing results show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-18 Wenlong Mou , Zheng Wen , Xi Chen

In Reinforcement Learning (RL), the goal of agents is to discover an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative rewards. This objective may also be viewed as finding a policy that optimizes a linear function of its state-action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-30 Navdeep Kumar , Kaixin Wang , Kfir Levy , Shie Mannor

In safe reinforcement learning (SRL) problems, an agent explores the environment to maximize an expected total reward and meanwhile avoids violation of certain constraints on a number of expected total costs. In general, such SRL problems…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Tengyu Xu , Yingbin Liang , Guanghui Lan

In this paper we propose two algorithms in the tabular setting and an algorithm for the function approximation setting for the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. SSP problems form an important class of problems in Reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Soumyajit Guin , Shalabh Bhatnagar

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in finite discounted MDPs, where a generative model of the MDP is assumed to be available. We consider a family or risk measures called the optimized certainty equivalent (OCE), which includes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Oliver Mortensen , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

In this paper, we present novel randomized algorithms for solving saddle point problems whose dual feasible region is given by the direct product of many convex sets. Our algorithms can achieve an ${\cal O}(1/N)$ and ${\cal O}(1/N^2)$ rate…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-11-16 Cong Dang , Guanghui Lan

Motivated by TRACE algorithm [Curtis et al. 2017], we propose a trust region algorithm for finding second order stationary points of a linearly constrained non-convex optimization problem. We show the convergence of the proposed algorithm…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-04-16 Maher Nouiehed , Meisam Razaviyayn

In this paper, we investigate a class of constrained saddle point (SP) problems where the objective function is nonconvex-concave and smooth. This class of problems has wide applicability in machine learning, including robust multi-class…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-02 Morteza Boroun , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Afrooz Jalilzadeh

This paper considers policy search in continuous state-action reinforcement learning problems. Typically, one computes search directions using a classic expression for the policy gradient called the Policy Gradient Theorem, which decomposes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-13 Sujay Bhatt , Alec Koppel , Vikram Krishnamurthy

We propose risk-sensitive reinforcement learning algorithms catering to three families of risk measures, namely expectiles, utility-based shortfall risk and optimized certainty equivalent risk. For each risk measure, in the context of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Sumedh Gupte , Shrey Rakeshkumar Patel , Soumen Pachal , Prashanth L. A. , Sanjay P. Bhat