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Existing multi-strategy adaptive differential evolution (DE) commonly involves trials of multiple strategies and then rewards better-performing ones with more resources. However, the trials of an exploitative or explorative strategy may…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-03 Sheng Xin Zhang , Wing Shing Chan , Kit Sang Tang , Shao Yong Zheng

We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu , Luca Viano

We develop a probabilistic framework for analysing model-based reinforcement learning in the episodic setting. We then apply it to study finite-time horizon stochastic control problems with linear dynamics but unknown coefficients and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Lukasz Szpruch , Tanut Treetanthiploet , Yufei Zhang

In many sequential decision-making problems, the goal is to optimize a utility function while satisfying a set of constraints on different utilities. This learning problem is formalized through Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-05 Yonathan Efroni , Shie Mannor , Matteo Pirotta

Sample-efficient exploration is crucial not only for discovering rewarding experiences but also for adapting to environment changes in a task-agnostic fashion. A principled treatment of the problem of optimal input synthesis for system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-10 Matthias Schultheis , Boris Belousov , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

Differential Evolution (DE) is a renowned optimization stratagem that can easily solve nonlinear and comprehensive problems. DE is a well known and uncomplicated population based probabilistic approach for comprehensive optimization. It has…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2015-06-22 Sandeep Kumar , Vivek Kumar Sharma , Rajani Kumari

Safe reinforcement learning is extremely challenging--not only must the agent explore an unknown environment, it must do so while ensuring no safety constraint violations. We formulate this safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem using the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-19 Archana Bura , Aria HasanzadeZonuzy , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai , Jean-Francois Chamberland

A major challenge in reinforcement learning is exploration, when local dithering methods such as epsilon-greedy sampling are insufficient to solve a given task. Many recent methods have proposed to intrinsically motivate an agent to seek…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-15 Riley Simmons-Edler , Ben Eisner , Daniel Yang , Anthony Bisulco , Eric Mitchell , Sebastian Seung , Daniel Lee

While learning in an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), an agent should trade off exploration to discover new information about the MDP, and exploitation of the current knowledge to maximize the reward. Although the agent will…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-16 Evrard Garcelon , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Alessandro Lazaric , Matteo Pirotta

We study the problem of episodic reinforcement learning in continuous state-action spaces with unknown rewards and transitions. Specifically, we consider the setting where the rewards and transitions are modeled using parametric bilinear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Reda Ouhamma , Debabrota Basu , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

Balancing exploration and exploitation remains a central challenge in reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for large language models (LLMs). Current RLVR methods often overemphasize exploitation, leading to entropy…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Liang Chen , Xueting Han , Qizhou Wang , Bo Han , Jing Bai , Hinrich Schutze , Kam-Fai Wong

We consider deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) in the context of reinforcement learning with sparse rewards. To enhance exploration, we introduce a search procedure, \emph{${\epsilon}{t}$-greedy}, which generates exploratory options…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Ehsan Futuhi , Shayan Karimi , Chao Gao , Martin Müller

Evolution strategies (ES) are a family of black-box optimization algorithms able to train deep neural networks roughly as well as Q-learning and policy gradient methods on challenging deep reinforcement learning (RL) problems, but are much…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-10-31 Edoardo Conti , Vashisht Madhavan , Felipe Petroski Such , Joel Lehman , Kenneth O. Stanley , Jeff Clune

Incomplete knowledge of the environment leads an agent to make decisions under uncertainty. One of the major dilemmas in Reinforcement Learning (RL) where an autonomous agent has to balance two contrasting needs in making its decisions is:…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-21 Valentina Zangirolami , Matteo Borrotti

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) faces significant challenges in addressing the hard-exploration problems in tasks with sparse or deceptive rewards and large state spaces. These challenges severely limit the practical application of DRL.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-03 Guojian Wang , Faguo Wu , Xiao Zhang , Ning Guo , Zhiming Zheng

Exploration is essential in reinforcement learning, particularly in environments where external rewards are sparse. Here we focus on exploration with intrinsic rewards, where the agent transiently augments the external rewards with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Changmin Yu , Neil Burgess , Maneesh Sahani , Samuel J. Gershman

Intrinsic rewards can improve exploration in reinforcement learning, but the exploration process may suffer from instability caused by non-stationary reward shaping and strong dependency on hyperparameters. In this work, we introduce…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Lukas Schäfer , Filippos Christianos , Josiah P. Hanna , Stefano V. Albrecht

Exploration is widely regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of reinforcement learning (RL), with many naive approaches succumbing to exponential sample complexity. To isolate the challenges of exploration, we propose a new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-10 Chi Jin , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Max Simchowitz , Tiancheng Yu

We present BRIEE (Block-structured Representation learning with Interleaved Explore Exploit), an algorithm for efficient reinforcement learning in Markov Decision Processes with block-structured dynamics (i.e., Block MDPs), where rich…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 Xuezhou Zhang , Yuda Song , Masatoshi Uehara , Mengdi Wang , Alekh Agarwal , Wen Sun

In actor-critic-based reinforcement learning algorithms such as Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic policy gradient (TD3), insufficient exploration of the spatial space can result in suboptimal policies when controlling 7-DOF robotic arms. To…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-08-27 Wen-Han Hsieh , Jen-Yuan Chang