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Finding optimal policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) is challenging due to their uncountable state spaces when transformed into fully observable Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) using belief states.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-09 Yunus Emre Demirci , Ali Devran Kara , Serdar Yüksel

The use of target networks is a common practice in deep reinforcement learning for stabilizing the training; however, theoretical understanding of this technique is still limited. In this paper, we study the so-called periodic Q-learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Donghwan Lee , Niao He

We consider the linear programming approach for constrained and unconstrained Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the long-run average cost criterion, where the class of MDPs in our study have Borel state spaces and discrete countable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-20 Huizhen Yu

In spite of the large literature on reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), a complete theoretical understanding is still lacking. In a partially observable setting, the history of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Erfan Seyedsalehi , Nima Akbarzadeh , Amit Sinha , Aditya Mahajan

Despite rapid progress in theoretical reinforcement learning (RL) over the last few years, most of the known guarantees are worst-case in nature, failing to take advantage of structure that may be known a priori about a given RL problem at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Noah Golowich , Ankur Moitra

Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-14 Roshan Shariff , Csaba Szepesvári

This paper applies the authors' recent results on asynchronous stochastic approximation (SA) in the Borkar-Meyn framework to reinforcement learning in average-reward semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs). We establish the convergence of an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Huizhen Yu , Yi Wan , Richard S. Sutton

Within the framework of probably approximately correct Markov decision processes (PAC-MDP), much theoretical work has focused on methods to attain near optimality after a relatively long period of learning and exploration. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-04-06 Kenji Kawaguchi

Understanding the theoretical capabilities and limitations of quantum machine learning (QML) models to solve machine learning tasks is crucial to advancing both quantum software and hardware developments. Similarly to the classical setting,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-31 Qiuhao Chen , Yuling Jiao , Yinan Li , Xiliang Lu , Jerry Zhijian Yang

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Mohsen Amiri , Sindri Magnússon

We present metrics for measuring the similarity of states in a finite Markov decision process (MDP). The formulation of our metrics is based on the notion of bisimulation for MDPs, with an aim towards solving discounted infinite horizon…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-19 Norman Ferns , Prakash Panangaden , Doina Precup

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been demonstrated to have great potential in many applications of scientific discovery and design. Recent work includes, for example, the design of new structures and compositions of molecules for therapeutic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-17 Colin Bellinger , Rory Coles , Mark Crowley , Isaac Tamblyn

We revisit the reduction of learning in adversarial Markov decision processes [MDPs] to adversarial learning based on $Q$--values; this reduction has been considered in a number of recent articles as one building block to perform policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Matthieu Jonckheere , Chiara Mignacco , Gilles Stoltz

Applying Q-learning to high-dimensional or continuous action spaces can be difficult due to the required maximization over the set of possible actions. Motivated by techniques from amortized inference, we replace the expensive maximization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-23 Tom Van de Wiele , David Warde-Farley , Andriy Mnih , Volodymyr Mnih

Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-06 Vincent Corlay , Jean-Christophe Sibel

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is a rich mathematical framework that embraces a large class of complex sequential decision-making problems under uncertainty with limited observations. However, the complexity of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-11-29 Mingyu Park , Jaeuk Shin , Insoon Yang

We study infinite horizon discounted Mean Field Control (MFC) problems with common noise through the lens of Mean Field Markov Decision Processes (MFMDP). We allow the agents to use actions that are randomized not only at the individual…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-14 René Carmona , Mathieu Laurière , Zongjun Tan

We consider a reinforcement learning setting introduced in (Maillard et al., NIPS 2011) where the learner does not have explicit access to the states of the underlying Markov decision process (MDP). Instead, she has access to several models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-09-16 Ronald Ortner , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Daniil Ryabko

We propose a new simple and natural algorithm for learning the optimal Q-value function of a discounted-cost Markov Decision Process (MDP) when the transition kernels are unknown. Unlike the classical learning algorithms for MDPs, such as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-31 Dileep Kalathil , Vivek S. Borkar , Rahul Jain

A novel reinforcement learning scheme to synthesize policies for continuous-space Markov decision processes (MDPs) is proposed. This scheme enables one to apply model-free, off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithms for finite MDPs to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-03-03 Abolfazl Lavaei , Fabio Somenzi , Sadegh Soudjani , Ashutosh Trivedi , Majid Zamani