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Reinforcement learning has demonstrated impressive performance in various challenging problems such as robotics, board games, and classical arcade games. However, its real-world applications can be hindered by the absence of robustness and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Siemen Herremans , Ali Anwar , Siegfried Mercelis

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is believed to have higher sample efficiency compared with model-free reinforcement learning (MFRL). However, MBRL is plagued by dynamics bottleneck dilemma. Dynamics bottleneck dilemma is the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Xiyao Wang , Junge Zhang , Wenzhen Huang , Qiyue Yin

We present an algorithm based on the \emph{Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty} (OFU) principle which is able to learn Reinforcement Learning (RL) modeled by Markov decision process (MDP) with finite state-action space efficiently. By…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Zihan Zhang , Xiangyang Ji

Ensuring the robustness of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents against adversarial attacks is critical for their trustworthy deployment. Recent research highlights the challenges of achieving state-adversarial robustness and suggests…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Haoran Li , Zicheng Zhang , Wang Luo , Congying Han , Jiayu Lv , Tiande Guo , Yudong Hu

In many real-world reinforcement learning (RL) problems, besides optimizing the main objective function, an agent must concurrently avoid violating a number of constraints. In particular, besides optimizing performance it is crucial to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-22 Yinlam Chow , Ofir Nachum , Edgar Duenez-Guzman , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

Model-based offline reinforcement learning (RL) has made remarkable progress, offering a promising avenue for improving generalization with synthetic model rollouts. Existing works primarily focus on incorporating pessimism for policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-12 Yuanzhao Zhai , Yiying Li , Zijian Gao , Xudong Gong , Kele Xu , Dawei Feng , Ding Bo , Huaimin Wang

In this paper, we consider the important problem of safe exploration in reinforcement learning. While reinforcement learning is well-suited to domains with complex transition dynamics and high-dimensional state-action spaces, an additional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-05 Javier Garcia , Fernando Fernandez

Off-dynamics reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment transition dynamics are different, can be formulated as learning in a robust Markov decision process (RMDP) where uncertainties in transition dynamics are imposed.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Yiting He , Zhishuai Liu , Weixin Wang , Pan Xu

We study Markov Decision Processes (MDP) wherein states correspond to causal graphs that stochastically generate rewards. In this setup, the learner's goal is to identify atomic interventions that lead to high rewards by intervening on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-02 Rahul Madhavan , Aurghya Maiti , Gaurav Sinha , Siddharth Barman

In online reinforcement learning (RL), efficient exploration remains particularly challenging in high-dimensional environments with sparse rewards. In low-dimensional environments, where tabular parameterization is possible, count-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-21 Tianjun Zhang , Paria Rashidinejad , Jiantao Jiao , Yuandong Tian , Joseph Gonzalez , Stuart Russell

We study the adaptive control of an unknown linear system with a quadratic cost function subject to safety constraints on both the states and actions. The challenges of this problem arise from the tension among safety, exploration,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-11-02 Yingying Li , Subhro Das , Jeff Shamma , Na Li

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is sample-efficient but struggles in sparse reward settings. A critical bottleneck arises from the lack of informative gradients in sparse settings, where standard reward models often yield flat…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Yao-Hui Li , Zeyu Wang , Xin Li , Wei Pang , Yingfang Yuan , Zhengkun Chen , Boya Zhang , Riashat Islam , Alex Lamb , Yonggang Zhang

We study the model-based undiscounted reinforcement learning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The oracle we consider is the optimal policy of the POMDP with a known environment in terms of the average reward over…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Yi Xiong , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao , Xiang Zhou

Safe reinforcement learning has many variants and it is still an open research problem. Here, we focus on how to use action guidance by means of a non-expert demonstrator to avoid catastrophic events in a domain with sparse, delayed, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-12 Bilal Kartal , Pablo Hernandez-Leal , Chao Gao , Matthew E. Taylor

This paper aims to put forward the concept that learning to take safe actions in unknown environments, even with probability one guarantees, can be achieved without the need for an unbounded number of exploratory trials, provided that one…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-01 Agustin Castellano , Juan Bazerque , Enrique Mallada

One of the challenges in online reinforcement learning (RL) is that the agent needs to trade off the exploration of the environment and the exploitation of the samples to optimize its behavior. Whether we optimize for regret, sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-19 Jean Tarbouriech , Matteo Pirotta , Michal Valko , Alessandro Lazaric

We present a new algorithm based on posterior sampling for learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDP) in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. The algorithm achieves near-optimal regret bounds while being advantageous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Danil Provodin , Pratik Gajane , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Maurits Kaptein

The safe linear bandit problem (SLB) is an online approach to linear programming with unknown objective and unknown roundwise constraints, under stochastic bandit feedback of rewards and safety risks of actions. We study the tradeoffs…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Aditya Gangrade , Tianrui Chen , Venkatesh Saligrama

We study reinforcement learning (RL) for decision processes with non-Markovian reward, in which high-level knowledge of the task in the form of reward machines is available to the learner. We consider probabilistic reward machines with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Hippolyte Bourel , Anders Jonsson , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Chenxiao Ma , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

This paper puts forward the concept that learning to take safe actions in unknown environments, even with probability one guarantees, can be achieved without the need for an unbounded number of exploratory trials. This is indeed possible,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-02-14 Agustin Castellano , Hancheng Min , Juan Bazerque , Enrique Mallada