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Most reinforcement learning algorithms seek a single optimal strategy that solves a given task. However, it can often be valuable to learn a diverse set of solutions, for instance, to make an agent's interaction with users more engaging, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-09 Wentse Chen , Shiyu Huang , Yuan Chiang , Tim Pearce , Wei-Wei Tu , Ting Chen , Jun Zhu

Aligning denoising generative models with human preferences or verifiable rewards remains a key challenge. While policy-gradient online reinforcement learning (RL) offers a principled post-training framework, its direct application is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Bingda Tang , Yuhui Zhang , Xiaohan Wang , Jiayuan Mao , Ludwig Schmidt , Serena Yeung-Levy

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is an effective framework for aligning large language models with human preferences, but it struggles with complex reasoning tasks. DPO optimizes for the likelihood of generating preferred over…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Darsh Kachroo , Adriana Caraeni , Arjun Prasaath Anbazhagan , Brennan Lagasse , Kevin Zhu

Recent progress in randomized motion planners has led to the development of a new class of sampling-based algorithms that provide asymptotic optimality guarantees, notably the RRT* and the PRM* algorithms. Careful analysis reveals that the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2016-09-21 Oktay Arslan , Panagiotis Tsiotras

This paper introduces a new approach that leverages Multi-agent Bayesian Optimization (MABO) to design Distributed Model Predictive Control (DMPC) schemes for multi-agent systems. The primary objective is to learn optimal DMPC schemes even…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-21 Hossein Nejatbakhsh Esfahani , Kai Liu , Javad Mohammadpour Velni

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a widely adopted offline algorithm for preference-based reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), designed to improve training simplicity and stability by redefining reward functions.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-30 Gengxu Li , Tingyu Xia , Yi Chang , Yuan Wu

As machine learning models are deployed ever more broadly, it becomes increasingly important that they are not only able to perform well on their training distribution, but also yield accurate predictions when confronted with distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-14 Paul Michel , Tatsunori Hashimoto , Graham Neubig

We study zeroth-order optimization where solutions must minimize a cost $d(s)$ while maintaining high probability under a complex generative prior $L(s)$ (e.g., a parameterized model). This reduces to sampling from a target distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Pranjal Awasthi , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Ravi Kumar , Kamesh Munagala

Exploration is essential in reinforcement learning as an agent relies on trial and error to learn an optimal policy. However, when rewards are sparse, naive exploration strategies, like noise injection, are often insufficient. Intrinsic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Minjae Cho , Huy Trong Tran

On-policy reinforcement learning methods, like Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), often demand extensive data per update, leading to sample inefficiency. This paper introduces Reflective Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Yaozhong Gan , Renye Yan , Zhe Wu , Junliang Xing

In many contemporary applications such as healthcare, finance, robotics, and recommendation systems, continuous deployment of new policies for data collection and online learning is either cost ineffective or impractical. We consider a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-07 DiJia Su , Jason D. Lee , John M. Mulvey , H. Vincent Poor

We study episodic reinforcement learning (RL) in non-stationary linear kernel Markov decision processes (MDPs). In this setting, both the reward function and the transition kernel are linear with respect to the given feature maps and are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Han Zhong , Zhongren Chen , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Csaba Szepesvári

We introduce Massively Multi-Task Model-Based Policy Optimization (M3PO), a scalable model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) framework designed to address sample inefficiency in single-task settings and poor generalization in multi-task…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Aditya Narendra , Dmitry Makarov , Aleksandr Panov

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is broadly utilized for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values because of its flexibility. Despite its effectiveness, it has been observed that the capability of DPO to generate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Wenqiao Zhu , Ji Liu , Lulu Wang , Jun Wu , Yulun Zhang

Balancing exploration and exploitation during reinforcement learning fine-tuning of generative models presents a critical challenge, as existing approaches rely on fixed divergence regularization that creates an inherent dilemma: strong…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Jiajun Fan , Tong Wei , Chaoran Cheng , Yuxin Chen , Ge Liu

A basic model in sequential decision making is the Markov decision process (MDP), which is extended to Robust MDPs (RMDPs) by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case transition probabilities…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Alipasha Montaseri , Ali Shafiee

Provably efficient Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) based on optimism or posterior sampling (PSRL) is ensured to attain the global optimality asymptotically by introducing the complexity measure of the model. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-19 Shenao Zhang

The problem of path planning has been studied for years. Classic planning pipelines, including perception, mapping, and path searching, can result in latency and compounding errors between modules. While recent studies have demonstrated the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Fan Yang , Chen Wang , Cesar Cadena , Marco Hutter

Post-training LLMs with Reinforcement Learning, specifically Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), has emerged as a paradigm for enhancing mathematical reasoning. However, standard GRPO relies on scalar correctness rewards that are…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Xiwen Chen , Wenhui Zhu , Peijie Qiu , Xuanzhao Dong , Hao Wang , Haiyu Wu , Huayu Li , Aristeidis Sotiras , Yalin Wang , Abolfazl Razi

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has been proposed as a promising alternative to Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) based Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF). However, empirical evaluations consistently reveal suboptimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-03 Qinwei Ma , Jingzhe Shi , Can Jin , Jenq-Neng Hwang , Serge Belongie , Lei Li