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We study the sample complexity of learning an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in an average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) under a generative model. For weakly communicating MDPs, we establish the complexity bound…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Matthew Zurek , Yudong Chen

Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as Markov Decision Process (MDP) optimization, is a important challenge in artificial intelligence. Two key approaches to this problem are reinforcement learning (RL) and planning. This paper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-01 Thomas M. Moerland , Joost Broekens , Aske Plaat , Catholijn M. Jonker

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Zijun Chen , Shengbo Wang , Nian Si

Safety is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in real-world applications such as autonomous driving, robotics, and healthcare. To address this, Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are commonly used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Chang Liu , Yunfan Li , Lin F. Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) problems are fundamental in online decision-making and have been instrumental in finding an optimal policy for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Function approximations are usually deployed to handle large or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Jiashuo Jiang , Yiming Zong , Yinyu Ye

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in finite discounted MDPs with recursive entropic risk measures (ERM), where the risk parameter $\beta \neq 0$ controls the agent's risk attitude: $\beta>0$ for risk-averse and $\beta<0$ for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Oliver Mortensen , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Vincent Leon , S. Rasoul Etesami

Three major challenges in reinforcement learning are the complex dynamical systems with large state spaces, the costly data acquisition processes, and the deviation of real-world dynamics from the training environment deployment. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Shyam Sundhar Ramesh , Pier Giuseppe Sessa , Yifan Hu , Andreas Krause , Ilija Bogunovic

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

MDPs with low-rank transitions -- that is, the transition matrix can be factored into the product of two matrices, left and right -- is a highly representative structure that enables tractable learning. The left matrix enables expressive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Audrey Huang , Jinglin Chen , Nan Jiang

The sim-to-real gap, which represents the disparity between training and testing environments, poses a significant challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). A promising approach to addressing this challenge is distributionally robust RL,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Miao Lu , Han Zhong , Tong Zhang , Jose Blanchet

Any reinforcement learning algorithm that applies to all Markov decision processes (MDPs) will suffer $\Omega(\sqrt{SAT})$ regret on some MDP, where $T$ is the elapsed time and $S$ and $A$ are the cardinalities of the state and action…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

We study the problem of Reinforcement Learning (RL) with linear function approximation, i.e. assuming the optimal action-value function is linear in a known $d$-dimensional feature mapping. Unfortunately, however, based on only this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-15 Zeyu Jia , Randy Jia , Dhruv Madeka , Dean P. Foster

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

Robust reinforcement learning (RL) under the average-reward criterion is essential for long-term decision-making, particularly when the environment may differ from its specification. However, a significant gap exists in understanding the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Zachary Roch , Chi Zhang , George Atia , Yue Wang

A Markov decision process can be parameterized by a transition kernel and a reward function. Both play essential roles in the study of reinforcement learning as evidenced by their presence in the Bellman equations. In our inquiry of various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-04 Falcon Z. Dai

Bayesian approaches developed to solve the optimal design of sequential experiments are mathematically elegant but computationally challenging. Recently, techniques using amortization have been proposed to make these Bayesian approaches…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Tom Blau , Edwin V. Bonilla , Iadine Chades , Amir Dezfouli

Reinforcement learning (RL) often necessitates a meticulous Markov Decision Process (MDP) design tailored to each task. This work aims to address this challenge by proposing a systematic approach to behavior synthesis and control for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-18 Jean-Pierre Sleiman , Mayank Mittal , Marco Hutter

Many real-world applications, such as those in medical domains, recommendation systems, etc, can be formulated as large state space reinforcement learning problems with only a small budget of the number of policy changes, i.e., low…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Minbo Gao , Tianle Xie , Simon S. Du , Lin F. Yang

Network Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), a popular model for multi-agent control, pose a significant challenge to efficient learning due to the exponential growth of the global state-action space with the number of agents. In this work,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Zhaolin Ren , Runyu Zhang , Bo Dai , Na Li