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We study infinite-horizon average-reward constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) under the weakly communicating assumption. Our contributions are twofold. First, we establish strong duality for weakly communicating average-reward…
In constrained reinforcement learning (RL), a learning agent seeks to not only optimize the overall reward but also satisfy the additional safety, diversity, or budget constraints. Consequently, existing constrained RL solutions require…
In this paper we design hybrid control policies for hybrid systems whose mathematical models are unknown. Our contributions are threefold. First, we propose a framework for modelling the hybrid control design problem as a single Markov…
We present a unified framework based on primal-dual stochastic mirror descent for approximately solving infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) given a generative model. When applied to an average-reward MDP with $A_{tot}$ total…
We study a Q learning algorithm for continuous time stochastic control problems. The proposed algorithm uses the sampled state process by discretizing the state and control action spaces under piece-wise constant control processes. We show…
This paper addresses the problem of model-free reinforcement learning for Robust Markov Decision Process (RMDP) with large state spaces. The goal of the RMDP framework is to find a policy that is robust against the parameter uncertainties…
Learning from demonstration has proven effective in robotics for acquiring natural behaviors, such as stylistic motions and lifelike agility, particularly when explicitly defining style-oriented reward functions is challenging. Synthesizing…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…
We develop a novel unified randomized block-coordinate primal-dual algorithm to solve a class of nonsmooth constrained convex optimization problems, which covers different existing variants and model settings from the literature. We prove…
Primal-dual safe RL methods commonly perform iterations between the primal update of the policy and the dual update of the Lagrange Multiplier. Such a training paradigm is highly susceptible to the error in cumulative cost estimation since…
This paper studies the optimization of Markov decision processes (MDPs) from a risk-seeking perspective, where the risk is measured by conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). The objective is to find a policy that maximizes the long-run CVaR of…
This paper investigates value function approximation in the context of zero-sum Markov games, which can be viewed as a generalization of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework to the two-agent case. We generalize error bounds from MDPs…
This thesis develops theoretical frameworks and algorithms that advance constrained reinforcement learning (RL) across control, preference learning, and alignment of large language models. The first contribution addresses constrained Markov…
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…
We propose a successive convex approximation based off-policy optimization (SCAOPO) algorithm to solve the general constrained reinforcement learning problem, which is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) in the…
In the contextual linear bandit setting, algorithms built on the optimism principle fail to exploit the structure of the problem and have been shown to be asymptotically suboptimal. In this paper, we follow recent approaches of deriving…
We study continuous action reinforcement learning problems in which it is crucial that the agent interacts with the environment only through safe policies, i.e.,~policies that do not take the agent to undesirable situations. We formulate…
The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…
We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…
Constrained Reinforcement Learning has been employed to enforce safety constraints on policy through the use of expected cost constraints. The key challenge is in handling expected cost accumulated using the policy and not just in a single…