English
Related papers

Related papers: A General Framework for Sample-Efficient Function …

200 papers

Reinforcement learning (RL) promises a framework for near-universal problem-solving. In practice however, RL algorithms are often tailored to specific benchmarks, relying on carefully tuned hyperparameters and algorithmic choices. Recently,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Scott Fujimoto , Pierluca D'Oro , Amy Zhang , Yuandong Tian , Michael Rabbat

Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Montaser Mohammedalamen , Michael Bowling

Thompson sampling (TS) is one of the most popular exploration techniques in reinforcement learning (RL). However, most TS algorithms with theoretical guarantees are difficult to implement and not generalizable to Deep RL. While the emerging…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Haque Ishfaq , Yixin Tan , Yu Yang , Qingfeng Lan , Jianfeng Lu , A. Rupam Mahmood , Doina Precup , Pan Xu

The classical theory of reinforcement learning (RL) has focused on tabular and linear representations of value functions. Further progress hinges on combining RL with modern function approximators such as kernel functions and deep neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Zhuoran Yang , Chi Jin , Zhaoran Wang , Mengdi Wang , Michael I. Jordan

We study the reinforcement learning (RL) problem in a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP), where an agent explores the environment to maximize the expected cumulative reward while satisfying a single constraint on the expected total…

Efficient exploration is one of the main challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). Most existing sample-efficient algorithms assume the existence of a single reward function during exploration. In many practical scenarios, however, there…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Xuezhou Zhang , Yuzhe ma , Adish Singla

Provably sample-efficient Reinforcement Learning (RL) with rich observations and function approximation has witnessed tremendous recent progress, particularly when the underlying function approximators are linear. In this linear regime,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Alekh Agarwal , Tong Zhang

Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (RL) is widely believed to have the potential to improve sample efficiency by allowing an agent to synthesize large amounts of imagined experience. Experience Replay (ER) can be considered a simple kind of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-11 Kenny Young , Aditya Ramesh , Louis Kirsch , Jürgen Schmidhuber

How to learn an effective reinforcement learning-based model for control tasks from high-level visual observations is a practical and challenging problem. A key to solving this problem is to learn low-dimensional state representations from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-27 Jianda Chen , Sinno Jialin Pan

Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as optimization of a Markov Decision Process, is a key challenge in artificial intelligence. Two successful approaches to MDP optimization are reinforcement learning and planning, which both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-01 Thomas M. Moerland , Joost Broekens , Aske Plaat , Catholijn M. Jonker

We consider the problem of learning an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in a general class of continuous-space Markov decision processes (MDPs) having smooth Bellman operators. Given access to a generative model, we achieve rate-optimal sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-13 Davide Maran , Alberto Maria Metelli , Matteo Papini , Marcello Restelli

Reinforcement learning tasks are typically specified as Markov decision processes. This formalism has been highly successful, though specifications often couple the dynamics of the environment and the learning objective. This lack of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-09-21 Martha White

Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) assumes the agents make decisions based on Markov decision processes (MDPs) with one-step transition models. In many real-world applications, such as energy management and stock investment, agents can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Chenbei Lu , Zaiwei Chen , Tongxin Li , Chenye Wu , Adam Wierman

Continuous-time reinforcement learning (CTRL) provides a principled framework for sequential decision-making in environments where interactions evolve continuously over time. Despite its empirical success, the theoretical understanding of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Runze Zhao , Yue Yu , Adams Yiyue Zhu , Chen Yang , Dongruo Zhou

This work introduces Bilinear Classes, a new structural framework, which permit generalization in reinforcement learning in a wide variety of settings through the use of function approximation. The framework incorporates nearly all existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Simon S. Du , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Shachar Lovett , Gaurav Mahajan , Wen Sun , Ruosong Wang

In this study, we derive Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bounds on the asymptotic sample-complexity for RL within the infinite-horizon Markov Decision Process (MDP) setting that are sharper than those in existing literature. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-17 Mohit Prashant , Arvind Easwaran

The exploration-exploitation dilemma in reinforcement learning (RL) is a fundamental challenge to efficient RL algorithms. Existing algorithms for finite state and action discounted RL problems address this by assuming sufficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Caleb Ju , Guanghui Lan

This paper introduces a quantum framework for addressing reinforcement learning (RL) tasks, grounded in the quantum principles and leveraging a fully quantum model of the classical Markov decision process (MDP). By employing quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-23 Thet Htar Su , Shaswot Shresthamali , Masaaki Kondo

Sample-efficiency guarantees for offline reinforcement learning (RL) often rely on strong assumptions on both the function classes (e.g., Bellman-completeness) and the data coverage (e.g., all-policy concentrability). Despite the recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-29 Wenhao Zhan , Baihe Huang , Audrey Huang , Nan Jiang , Jason D. Lee

There hardly exists a general solver that is efficient for scheduling problems due to their diversity and complexity. In this study, we develop a two-stage framework, in which reinforcement learning (RL) and traditional operations research…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-03-11 Yongming He , Guohua Wu , Yingwu Chen , Witold Pedrycz