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We introduce Random Latent Exploration (RLE), a simple yet effective exploration strategy in reinforcement learning (RL). On average, RLE outperforms noise-based methods, which perturb the agent's actions, and bonus-based exploration, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Srinath Mahankali , Zhang-Wei Hong , Ayush Sekhari , Alexander Rakhlin , Pulkit Agrawal

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has proven effective for enhancing Large Language Models (LLMs) on complex reasoning tasks. However, existing methods suffer from an exploration dilemma: the sharply peaked initial…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Yuhua Jiang , Jiawei Huang , Yufeng Yuan , Xin Mao , Yu Yue , Qianchuan Zhao , Lin Yan

Reinforcement learning with sparse rewards is still an open challenge. Classic methods rely on getting feedback via extrinsic rewards to train the agent, and in situations where this occurs very rarely the agent learns slowly or cannot…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-04 Simone Parisi , Davide Tateo , Maximilian Hensel , Carlo D'Eramo , Jan Peters , Joni Pajarinen

This paper presents a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm to synthesize a control policy that maximizes the satisfaction probability of linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications. Due to the consideration of environment and…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Mingyu Cai , Shaoping Xiao , Baoluo Li , Zhiliang Li , Zhen Kan

We study the model-based reward-free reinforcement learning with linear function approximation for episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs). In this setting, the agent works in two phases. In the exploration phase, the agent interacts with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Weitong Zhang , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

We study offline reinforcement learning (RL), which aims to learn an optimal policy based on a dataset collected a priori. Due to the lack of further interactions with the environment, offline RL suffers from the insufficient coverage of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-06 Ying Jin , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

We introduce Random Reward Perturbation (RRP), a novel exploration strategy for reinforcement learning (RL). Our theoretical analyses demonstrate that adding zero-mean noise to environmental rewards effectively enhances policy diversity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Haozhe Ma , Guoji Fu , Zhengding Luo , Jiele Wu , Tze-Yun Leong

In reinforcement learning the Q-values summarize the expected future rewards that the agent will attain. However, they cannot capture the epistemic uncertainty about those rewards. In this work we derive a new Bellman operator with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-07 Brendan O'Donoghue

Risk sensitivity has become a central theme in reinforcement learning (RL), where convex risk measures and robust formulations provide principled ways to model preferences beyond expected return. Recent extensions to multi-agent RL (MARL)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Runyu Zhang , Na Li , Asuman Ozdaglar , Jeff Shamma , Gioele Zardini

We present a modular approach to reinforcement learning that uses a Bayesian representation of the uncertainty over models. The approach, BOSS (Best of Sampled Set), drives exploration by sampling multiple models from the posterior and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-05-14 John Asmuth , Lihong Li , Michael L. Littman , Ali Nouri , David Wingate

A crucial problem in reinforcement learning is learning the optimal policy. We study this in tabular infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes under the online setting. The existing algorithms either fail to achieve regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Xiang Ji , Gen Li

We develop a model selection approach to tackle reinforcement learning with adversarial corruption in both transition and reward. For finite-horizon tabular MDPs, without prior knowledge on the total amount of corruption, our algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Chen-Yu Wei , Christoph Dann , Julian Zimmert

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms assume that users specify tasks by manually writing down a reward function. However, this process can be laborious and demands considerable technical expertise. Can we devise RL algorithms that instead…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Benjamin Eysenbach , Sergey Levine , Ruslan Salakhutdinov

We propose a novel algorithm for offline reinforcement learning called Value Iteration with Perturbed Rewards (VIPeR), which amalgamates the pessimism principle with random perturbations of the value function. Most current offline RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-07 Thanh Nguyen-Tang , Raman Arora

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a key technique for aligning the output of large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. To learn the reward function, most existing RLHF algorithms use the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-11 Kai Ye , Hongyi Zhou , Jin Zhu , Francesco Quinzan , Chengchun Shi

This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear mixture MDPs under the Bellman optimality condition. While guaranteeing computational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Woojin Chae , Dabeen Lee

We develop several new algorithms for learning Markov Decision Processes in an infinite-horizon average-reward setting with linear function approximation. Using the optimism principle and assuming that the MDP has a linear structure, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-27 Chen-Yu Wei , Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Haipeng Luo , Rahul Jain

A fundamental question in reinforcement learning is whether model-free algorithms are sample efficient. Recently, Jin et al. \cite{jin2018q} proposed a Q-learning algorithm with UCB exploration policy, and proved it has nearly optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-30 Kefan Dong , Yuanhao Wang , Xiaoyu Chen , Liwei Wang

Optimism in the face of uncertainty is a popular approach to balance exploration and exploitation in reinforcement learning. Here, we consider the online linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem, i.e., to learn the LQR corresponding to an…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-01 Marcell Bartos , Bruce D. Lee , Lenart Treven , Andreas Krause , Florian Dörfler , Melanie N. Zeilinger

This paper presents the first non-asymptotic result showing that a model-free algorithm can achieve a logarithmic cumulative regret for episodic tabular reinforcement learning if there exists a strictly positive sub-optimality gap in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-24 Kunhe Yang , Lin F. Yang , Simon S. Du