Related papers: Is Q-Learning Minimax Optimal? A Tight Sample Comp…

We investigate the challenges of applying model-free reinforcement learning algorithms, like online Q-learning, to infinite state space Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We first introduce the notion of Local Learning Processes (LLPs),…

Temporal-difference learning (TD), coupled with neural networks, is among the most fundamental building blocks of deep reinforcement learning. However, due to the nonlinearity in value function approximation, such a coupling leads to…

Motivated by practical applications where stable long-term performance is critical-such as robotics, operations research, and healthcare-we study the problem of distributionally robust (DR) average-reward reinforcement learning. We propose…

The optimistic nature of the Q-learning target leads to an overestimation bias, which is an inherent problem associated with standard $Q-$learning. Such a bias fails to account for the possibility of low returns, particularly in risky…

This paper studies the continuous-time q-learning (the continuous time counterpart of Q-learing) for Markov switching system under Tsallis entropy regularization. We address the difficulty in traditional RL algorithms where the Tsallis…

We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…

Q-learning is widely recognized as an effective approach for synthesizing controllers to achieve specific goals. However, handling challenges posed by continuous state-action spaces remains an ongoing research focus. This paper presents a…

In this paper, we use concepts from supervisory control theory of discrete event systems to propose a method to learn optimal control policies for a finite-state Markov Decision Process (MDP) in which (only) certain sequences of actions are…

Precision medicine aims to tailor therapeutic decisions to individual patient characteristics. This objective is commonly formalized through dynamic treatment regimes, which use statistical and machine learning methods to derive sequential…

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has witnessed a remarkable surge in interest, fueled by the empirical success achieved in applications of single-agent reinforcement learning (RL). In this study, we consider a distributed…

In contrast to the advances in characterizing the sample complexity for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs), the optimal statistical complexity for solving constrained MDPs (CMDPs) remains unknown. We resolve this question by providing…

This paper develops an unified framework to study finite-sample convergence guarantees of a large class of value-based asynchronous reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. We do this by first reformulating the RL algorithms as…

State-of-the-art deep Q-learning methods update Q-values using state transition tuples sampled from the experience replay buffer. This strategy often uniformly and randomly samples or prioritizes data sampling based on measures such as the…

Meta-learning can extract an inductive bias from previous learning experience and assist the training of new tasks. It is often realized through optimizing a meta-model with the evaluation loss of task-specific solvers. Most existing…

We study reinforcement learning under model misspecification, where we do not have access to the true environment but only to a reasonably close approximation to it. We address this problem by extending the framework of robust MDPs to the…

In a discounted reward Markov Decision Process (MDP), the objective is to find the optimal value function, i.e., the value function corresponding to an optimal policy. This problem reduces to solving a functional equation known as the…

In pursuit of reinforcement learning systems that could train in physical environments, we investigate multi-task approaches as a means to alleviate the need for massive data acquisition. In a tabular scenario where the Q-functions are…

Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms such as Q-learning [Watkins, Dayan 92] have been widely used in practice and can achieve human level performance in applications such as video games [Mnih et al. 15]. Recently, equipped with…

Q-learning is a widely used algorithm in reinforcement learning (RL), but its convergence can be slow, especially when the discount factor is close to one. Successive Over-Relaxation (SOR) Q-learning, which introduces a relaxation factor to…

We study the interplay between the data distribution and Q-learning-based algorithms with function approximation. We provide a unified theoretical and empirical analysis as to how different properties of the data distribution influence the…