Related papers: Safe Exploration by Solving Early Terminated MDP
In this work, we consider the regret minimization problem for reinforcement learning in latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDP). In an LMDP, an MDP is randomly drawn from a set of $M$ possible MDPs at the beginning of the interaction, but…
Reward-free reinforcement learning (RF-RL), a recently introduced RL paradigm, relies on random action-taking to explore the unknown environment without any reward feedback information. While the primary goal of the exploration phase in…
In order to satisfy safety conditions, an agent may be constrained from acting freely. A safe controller can be designed a priori if an environment is well understood, but not when learning is employed. In particular, reinforcement learned…
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…
Reinforcement learning has been successfully used to solve difficult tasks in complex unknown environments. However, these methods typically do not provide any safety guarantees during the learning process. This is particularly problematic,…
Reinforcement learning (RL) in partially observable, fully cooperative multi-agent settings (Dec-POMDPs) can in principle be used to address many real-world challenges such as controlling a swarm of rescue robots or a team of quadcopters.…
Balancing helpfulness and safety (harmlessness) is a critical challenge in aligning large language models (LLMs). Current approaches often decouple these two objectives, training separate preference models for helpfulness and safety, while…
Balancing exploration and exploitation remains a central challenge in reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for large language models (LLMs). Current RLVR methods often overemphasize exploitation, leading to entropy…
Exploration in environments with sparse rewards has been a persistent problem in reinforcement learning (RL). Many tasks are natural to specify with a sparse reward, and manually shaping a reward function can result in suboptimal…
Balancing exploration and exploitation remains a key challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). State-of-the-art RL algorithms suffer from high sample complexity, particularly in the sparse reward case, where they can do no better than to…
To plan safely in uncertain environments, agents must balance utility with safety constraints. Safe planning problems can be modeled as a chance-constrained partially observable Markov decision process (CC-POMDP) and solutions often use…
Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) is appealing because (i) it enables planning and thus more strategic exploration, and (ii) by decoupling dynamics from rewards, it enables fast transfer to new reward functions. However, learning an…
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…
We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…
In safe offline reinforcement learning (RL), the objective is to develop a policy that maximizes cumulative rewards while strictly adhering to safety constraints, utilizing only offline data. Traditional methods often face difficulties in…
This paper presents a framework to tackle constrained combinatorial optimization problems using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL). To this end, we extend the Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) theory in order to deal with constraints in…
Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) extend standard Markov decision processes (MDPs) to account for uncertainty in the transition probabilities. RMDPs have an uncertainty set that defines a set of possible transition functions, each of…
Designing sample-efficient and computationally feasible reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms is particularly challenging in environments with large or infinite state and action spaces. In this paper, we advance this effort by presenting…
In applications of offline reinforcement learning to observational data, such as in healthcare or education, a general concern is that observed actions might be affected by unobserved factors, inducing confounding and biasing estimates…
We propose a safe exploration algorithm for deterministic Markov Decision Processes with unknown transition models. Our algorithm guarantees safety by leveraging Lipschitz-continuity to ensure that no unsafe states are visited during…