Related papers: Optimistic Policy Optimization is Provably Efficie…
Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) are among the most successful policy gradient approaches in deep reinforcement learning (RL). While these methods achieve state-of-the-art performance across a…
We consider a distributionally robust Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (DR-POMDP), where the distribution of the transition-observation probabilities is unknown at the beginning of each decision period, but their realizations…
Memoryless and finite-memory policies offer a practical alternative for solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), as they operate directly in the output space rather than in the high-dimensional belief space. However,…
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is among the most widely used algorithms in reinforcement learning, which achieves state-of-the-art performance in many challenging problems. The keys to its success are the reliable policy updates through…
Differentiable planning enables gradient-based optimization of decision-making problems by leveraging differentiable models of system dynamics. However, in highly nonlinear and hybrid discrete-continuous domains, the resulting optimization…
We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) based on an entropic risk measure in episodic non-stationary Markov decision processes (MDPs). Both the reward functions and the state transition kernels are unknown and allowed to vary…
We study the common generalization of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with sets of transition probabilities, known as robust MDPs (RMDPs). A standard goal in RMDPs is to compute a policy that maximizes the expected return under an…
Engagement-optimized adaptive tutoring systems may prioritize short-term behavioral signals over sustained learning outcomes, creating structural incentives for reward hacking in reinforcement learning policies. We formalize this challenge…
This paper discusses algorithms for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs) that have monotone optimal policies. We propose a two-stage alternating convex optimization scheme that can accelerate the search for an optimal policy by…
Many of the recent trajectory optimization algorithms alternate between linear approximation of the system dynamics around the mean trajectory and conservative policy update. One way of constraining the policy change is by bounding the…
Model-based algorithms, which learn a dynamics model from logged experience and perform some sort of pessimistic planning under the learned model, have emerged as a promising paradigm for offline reinforcement learning (offline RL).…
This note re-visits the rolling-horizon control approach to the problem of a Markov decision process (MDP) with infinite-horizon discounted expected reward criterion. Distinguished from the classical value-iteration approach, we develop an…
This paper studies constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with constraints against stochastic thresholds, aiming at safety of reinforcement learning in unknown and uncertain environments. We leverage a Growing-Window estimator…
This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…
We consider the problem of finding the best memoryless stochastic policy for an infinite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) with finite state and action spaces with respect to either the discounted or mean reward…
Optimal decision-making under partial observability requires agents to balance reducing uncertainty (exploration) against pursuing immediate objectives (exploitation). In this paper, we introduce a novel policy optimization framework for…
Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has become a central post-training paradigm for improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models. Yet existing methods share a common blind spot: they optimize policies…
Proximal policy optimization (PPO) has yielded state-of-the-art results in policy search, a subfield of reinforcement learning, with one of its key points being the use of a surrogate objective function to restrict the step size at each…
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…
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a widely used reinforcement learning algorithm known for its stability and sample efficiency, but it often suffers from premature convergence due to limited exploration. In this paper, we propose POEM…