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Related papers: Sample-Efficient, Exploration-Based Policy Optimis…

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We consider a team of reinforcement learning agents that concurrently operate in a common environment, and we develop an approach to efficient coordinated exploration that is suitable for problems of practical scale. Our approach builds on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-18 Maria Dimakopoulou , Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

Many traditional algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems involve using hand-crafted heuristics that sequentially construct a solution. Such heuristics are designed by domain experts and may often be suboptimal due to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Nina Mazyavkina , Sergey Sviridov , Sergei Ivanov , Evgeny Burnaev

This paper introduces and formalizes the Dynamic and Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem with Emission Quota (DS-QVRP-RR), a novel routing problems that integrates dynamic demand acceptance and routing with a global emission constraint. A…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Farid Najar , Dominique Barth , Yann Strozecki

In addition to their undisputed success in solving classical optimization problems, neuroevolutionary and population-based algorithms have become an alternative to standard reinforcement learning methods. However, evolutionary methods often…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-05-18 Jörg Stork , Martin Zaefferer , Nils Eisler , Patrick Tichelmann , Thomas Bartz-Beielstein , A. E. Eiben

We report a novel, computationally efficient approach for solving hard nonlinear problems of reinforcement learning (RL). Here we combine umbrella sampling, from computational physics/chemistry, with optimal control methods. The approach is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Egor E. Nuzhin , Nikolai V. Brilliantov

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently shown its success in tackling complex combinatorial optimization problems. When these problems are extended to multiobjective ones, it becomes difficult for the existing DRL approaches to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Zizhen Zhang , Zhiyuan Wu , Hang Zhang , Jiahai Wang

This work provides a Deep Reinforcement Learning approach to solving a periodic review inventory control system with stochastic vendor lead times, lost sales, correlated demand, and price matching. While this dynamic program has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-30 Dhruv Madeka , Kari Torkkola , Carson Eisenach , Anna Luo , Dean P. Foster , Sham M. Kakade

We address the challenge of exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) when the agent operates in an unknown environment with sparse or no rewards. In this work, we study the maximum entropy exploration problem of two different types. The…

Coverage path planning in a generic known environment is shown to be NP-hard. When the environment is unknown, it becomes more challenging as the robot is required to rely on its online map information built during coverage for planning its…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Javad Heydari , Olimpiya Saha , Viswanath Ganapathy

Despite significant progress in challenging problems across various domains, applying state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms remains challenging due to their sensitivity to the choice of hyperparameters. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-18 Jörg K. H. Franke , Gregor Köhler , André Biedenkapp , Frank Hutter

Scheduling is a fundamental task occurring in various automated systems applications, e.g., optimal schedules for machines on a job shop allow for a reduction of production costs and waste. Nevertheless, finding such schedules is often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-09 Pierre Tassel , Martin Gebser , Konstantin Schekotihin

This paper studies the continuous-time reinforcement learning (RL) for optimal switching problems across multiple regimes. We consider a type of exploratory formulation under entropy regularization where the agent randomizes both the timing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Yijie Huang , Mengge Li , Xiang Yu , Zhou Zhou

In this work, we consider learning-based applications in routing to solve a Vehicle Routing variant characterized by stochasticity and multiple objectives. Such problems are representative of practical settings where decision-makers have to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Abdo Abouelrous , Laurens Bliek , Yaoxin Wu , Yingqian Zhang

This work studies reinforcement learning (RL) in the context of multi-period supply chains subject to constraints, e.g., on production and inventory. We introduce Distributional Constrained Policy Optimization (DCPO), a novel approach for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-06 Jaime Sabal Bermúdez , Antonio del Rio Chanona , Calvin Tsay

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) is anticipated to exhibit higher sample efficiency compared to model-free RL by utilizing a virtual environment model. However, it is challenging to obtain sufficiently accurate representations of the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-19 Zihao Sheng , Zilin Huang , Sikai Chen

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an important field of research in machine learning that is increasingly being applied to complex optimization problems in physics. In parallel, concepts from physics have contributed to important advances in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-11 Argenis Arriojas , Jacob Adamczyk , Stas Tiomkin , Rahul V. Kulkarni

Learning from Demonstration is increasingly used for transferring operator manipulation skills to robots. In practice, it is important to cater for limited data and imperfect human demonstrations, as well as underlying safety constraints.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-04-03 Ya-Yen Tsai , Bo Xiao , Edward Johns , Guang-Zhong Yang

Developing and testing automated driving models in the real world might be challenging and even dangerous, while simulation can help with this, especially for challenging maneuvers. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has the potential to…

Exploration is a fundamental problem in robotics. While sampling-based planners have shown high performance, they are oftentimes compute intensive and can exhibit high variance. To this end, we propose to directly learn the underlying…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-15 Lukas Schmid , Chao Ni , Yuliang Zhong , Roland Siegwart , Olov Andersson

Evolutionary strategies have recently been shown to achieve competing levels of performance for complex optimization problems in reinforcement learning. In such problems, one often needs to optimize an objective function subject to a set of…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Youssef Diouane , Aurelien Lucchi , Vihang Patil