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We consider the problem of offline reinforcement learning (RL) -- a well-motivated setting of RL that aims at policy optimization using only historical data. Despite its wide applicability, theoretical understandings of offline RL, such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-04 Ming Yin , Yu Bai , Yu-Xiang Wang

In many real-life reinforcement learning (RL) problems, deploying new policies is costly. In those scenarios, algorithms must solve exploration (which requires adaptivity) while switching the deployed policy sparsely (which limits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-27 Dan Qiao , Ming Yin , Yu-Xiang Wang

In many real-world settings, reinforcement learning systems suffer performance degradation when the environment encountered at deployment differs from that observed during training. Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DR-RL)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Debamita Ghosh , George K. Atia , Yue Wang

The current paper studies sample-efficient Reinforcement Learning (RL) in settings where only the optimal value function is assumed to be linearly-realizable. It has recently been understood that, even under this seemingly strong assumption…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Philip Amortila , Nan Jiang , Dhruv Madeka , Dean P. Foster

We study a classification problem where each feature can be acquired for a cost and the goal is to optimize a trade-off between the expected classification error and the feature cost. We revisit a former approach that has framed the problem…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-11-13 Jaromír Janisch , Tomáš Pevný , Viliam Lisý

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

The problem of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in an unknown nonlinear dynamical system is equivalent to the search for an optimal feedback law utilizing the simulations/ rollouts of the dynamical system. Most RL techniques search over a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Ran Wang , Karthikeya S. Parunandi , Aayushman Sharma , Raman Goyal , Suman Chakravorty

The Robust Markov Decision Process (RMDP) framework focuses on designing control policies that are robust against the parameter uncertainties due to the mismatches between the simulator model and real-world settings. An RMDP problem is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-17 Kishan Panaganti , Dileep Kalathil

In this paper we consider the problem of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy for a discounted Markov Decision Process (MDP). Given an MDP with $S$ states, $A$ actions, the discount factor $\gamma \in (0,1)$, and an approximation threshold…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Zihan Zhang , Yuan Zhou , Xiangyang Ji

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms require large amounts of experience to learn an individual task. While in principle meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) algorithms enable agents to learn new skills from small amounts of experience,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-21 Kate Rakelly , Aurick Zhou , Deirdre Quillen , Chelsea Finn , Sergey Levine

Safe Reinforcement Learning (RL) plays an important role in applying RL algorithms to safety-critical real-world applications, addressing the trade-off between maximizing rewards and adhering to safety constraints. This work introduces a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-16 Fan Yang , Wenxuan Zhou , Zuxin Liu , Ding Zhao , David Held

We present a new model-based algorithm for reinforcement learning (RL) which consists of explicit exploration and exploitation phases, and is applicable in large or infinite state spaces. The algorithm maintains a set of dynamics models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-03 Mikael Henaff

In reinforcement learning (RL), agents continually interact with the environment and use the feedback to refine their behavior. To guide policy optimization, reward models are introduced as proxies of the desired objectives, such that when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Rui Yu , Shenghua Wan , Yucen Wang , Chen-Xiao Gao , Le Gan , Zongzhang Zhang , De-Chuan Zhan

Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is widely used to specify high-level objectives for system policies, and it is highly desirable for autonomous systems to learn the optimal policy with respect to such specifications. However, learning the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-26 Daqian Shao , Marta Kwiatkowska

Low-complexity models such as linear function representation play a pivotal role in enabling sample-efficient reinforcement learning (RL). The current paper pertains to a scenario with value-based linear representation, which postulates the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Gen Li , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi , Yuantao Gu , Yuting Wei

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has evolved to be one of the main methods for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs). However, existing RLHF methods are non-robust, and their performance deteriorates if the downstream…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Debmalya Mandal , Paulius Sasnauskas , Goran Radanovic

Reinforcement learning (RL) for exponential-utility optimization in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) lacks principled value-based algorithms. We address this gap in the fixed risk-aversion setting. Building on the Bellman-type…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Gugan Thoppe , L. A. Prashanth , Ankur Naskar , Sanjay Bhat

In the realm of reinforcement learning (RL), accounting for risk is crucial for making decisions under uncertainty, particularly in applications where safety and reliability are paramount. In this paper, we introduce a general framework on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Yu Chen , Xiangcheng Zhang , Siwei Wang , Longbo Huang

We introduce a novel class of algorithms to efficiently approximate the unknown return distributions in policy evaluation problems from distributional reinforcement learning (DRL). The proposed distributional dynamic programming algorithms…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-22 Julian Gerstenberg , Ralph Neininger , Denis Spiegel

We study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for episodic Markov decision processes (MDP) whose transition probability is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of state and action. Despite much recent progress in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-19 Taehyun Hwang , Min-hwan Oh