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Off-policy stochastic actor-critic methods rely on approximating the stochastic policy gradient in order to derive an optimal policy. One may also derive the optimal policy by approximating the action-value gradient. The use of action-value…
We propose a novel approach to solving input- and state-constrained parametric mixed-integer optimal control problems using Differentiable Predictive Control (DPC). Our approach follows the differentiable programming paradigm by learning an…
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is regarded as a potential method for car-following control and has been mostly studied to support a single following vehicle. However, it is more challenging to learn a stable and efficient car-following…
Adversarial optimization algorithms that explicitly search for flaws in agents' policies have been successfully applied to finding robust and diverse policies in multi-agent settings. However, the success of adversarial optimization has…
Proximal policy optimization (PPO) is one of the most successful deep reinforcement-learning methods, achieving state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of challenging tasks. However, its optimization behavior is still far from…
Uncertainties in transition dynamics pose a critical challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), often resulting in performance degradation of trained policies when deployed on hardware. Many robust RL approaches follow two strategies:…
To facilitate efficient learning, policy gradient approaches to deep reinforcement learning (RL) are typically paired with variance reduction measures and strategies for making large but safe policy changes based on a batch of experiences.…
Policy gradient methods in actor-critic reinforcement learning (RL) have become perhaps the most promising approaches to solving continuous optimal control problems. However, the trial-and-error nature of RL and the inherent randomness…
Intelligent traffic lights in smart cities can optimally reduce traffic congestion. In this study, we employ reinforcement learning to train the control agent of a traffic light on a simulator of urban mobility. As a difference from…
Policy gradient (PG) methods are successful approaches to deal with continuous reinforcement learning (RL) problems. They learn stochastic parametric (hyper)policies by either exploring in the space of actions or in the space of parameters.…
Policy Dual Averaging (PDA) offers a principled Policy Mirror Descent (PMD) framework that more naturally admits value function approximation than standard PMD, enabling the use of approximate advantage (or Q-) functions while retaining…
We introduce the Pontryagin-Guided Direct Policy Optimization (PG-DPO) framework for high-dimensional continuous-time portfolio choice. Our approach combines Pontryagin's Maximum Principle (PMP) with backpropagation through time (BPTT) to…
We propose a new family of policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning, which alternate between sampling data through interaction with the environment, and optimizing a "surrogate" objective function using stochastic gradient ascent.…
Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), exemplified by DeepSeek-R1, have underscored the potential of scaling inference-time compute through Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). However, GRPO frequently suffers from…
Neural Network based approximations of the Value function make up the core of leading Policy Based methods such as Trust Regional Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). While this adds significant value when…
Upside Down Reinforcement Learning (UDRL) is a promising framework for solving reinforcement learning problems which focuses on learning command-conditioned policies. In this work, we extend UDRL to the task of learning a…
In recent years, fully differentiable rigid body physics simulators have been developed, which can be used to simulate a wide range of robotic systems. In the context of reinforcement learning for control, these simulators theoretically…
This paper introduces a novel Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) algorithm for solving discrete-time finite-horizon optimal control problems with inequality constraints. Two variants, namely Feasible- and Infeasible-IPDDP algorithms,…
In this paper, we propose enhancing actor-critic reinforcement learning agents by parameterising the final actor layer which produces the actions in order to accommodate the behaviour discrepancy of different actuators, under different load…
Actor-critic (AC) methods are ubiquitous in reinforcement learning. Although it is understood that AC methods are closely related to policy gradient (PG), their precise connection has not been fully characterized previously. In this paper,…