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Solving tasks in Reinforcement Learning is no easy feat. As the goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward, it often learns to exploit loopholes and misspecifications in the reward signal resulting in unwanted behavior. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-27 Chen Tessler , Daniel J. Mankowitz , Shie Mannor

With the recent advancements of technology in facilitating real-time monitoring and data collection, "just-in-time" interventions can be delivered via mobile devices to achieve both real-time and long-term management and control.…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-26 Wenzhuo Zhou , Yuhan Li , Ruoqing Zhu

In this paper, we investigate dynamic optimization problems featuring both stochastic control and optimal stopping in a finite time horizon. The paper aims to develop new methodologies, which are significantly different from those of mixed…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2014-06-27 Xiongfei Jian , Xun Li , Fahuai Yi

Reinforcement learning (RL) theory has largely focused on proving minimax sample complexity bounds. These require strategic exploration algorithms that use relatively limited function classes for representing the policy or value function.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-16 Cassidy Laidlaw , Banghua Zhu , Stuart Russell , Anca Dragan

Recently, suboptimality estimates for model predictive controllers (MPC) have been derived for the case without additional stabilizing endpoint constraints or a Lyapunov function type endpoint weight. The proposed methods yield a posteriori…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Thomas Jahn , Jürgen Pannek

Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems often have access to sparse rewards where the agent receives a reward signal only when it has achieved the goal, making policy optimization a difficult problem. Several works augment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-11 Siddhant Agarwal , Ishan Durugkar , Peter Stone , Amy Zhang

Goal-conditioned Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) is a promising approach for scaling up reinforcement learning (RL) techniques. However, it often suffers from training inefficiency as the action space of the high-level, i.e., the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-23 Tianren Zhang , Shangqi Guo , Tian Tan , Xiaolin Hu , Feng Chen

We study the global convergence of policy gradient for infinite-horizon, continuous state and action space, and entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (MDPs). We consider a softmax policy with (one-hidden layer) neural network…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-17 Bekzhan Kerimkulov , James-Michael Leahy , David Šiška , Lukasz Szpruch

Despite the fact that deep reinforcement learning (RL) has surpassed human-level performances in various tasks, it still has several fundamental challenges. First, most RL methods require intensive data from the exploration of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-06 Zhe Xu , Bo Wu , Aditya Ojha , Daniel Neider , Ufuk Topcu

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) addresses the problem of recovering a task description given a demonstration of the optimal policy used to solve such a task. The optimal policy is usually provided by an expert or teacher, making IRL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-02-09 Héctor Ratia , Luis Montesano , Ruben Martinez-Cantin

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn policies that satisfy certain constraints before deploying them to safety-critical applications. Previous primal-dual style approaches suffer from instability issues and lack optimality…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Zuxin Liu , Zhepeng Cen , Vladislav Isenbaev , Wei Liu , Zhiwei Steven Wu , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Rene Carmona , Mathieu Lauriere

Reinforcement learning (RL) problems over general state and action spaces are notoriously challenging. In contrast to the tableau setting, one can not enumerate all the states and then iteratively update the policies for each state. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Caleb Ju , Guanghui Lan

Reinforcement learning (RL) problems are fundamental in online decision-making and have been instrumental in finding an optimal policy for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Function approximations are usually deployed to handle large or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Jiashuo Jiang , Yiming Zong , Yinyu Ye

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese

This paper examines reinforcement learning (RL) in infinite-horizon decision processes with almost-sure safety constraints, crucial for applications like autonomous systems, finance, and resource management. We propose a doubly-regularized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Pekka Malo , Lauri Viitasaari , Antti Suominen , Eeva Vilkkumaa , Olli Tahvonen

We study a finite-horizon restless multi-armed bandit problem with multiple actions, dubbed R(MA)^2B. The state of each arm evolves according to a controlled Markov decision process (MDP), and the reward of pulling an arm depends on both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Guojun Xiong , Jian Li , Rahul Singh

We study the problem of computing an optimal policy of an infinite-horizon discounted constrained Markov decision process (constrained MDP). Despite the popularity of Lagrangian-based policy search methods used in practice, the oscillation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-18 Dongsheng Ding , Chen-Yu Wei , Kaiqing Zhang , Alejandro Ribeiro

Recent advances in constrained reinforcement learning (RL) have endowed reinforcement learning with certain safety guarantees. However, deploying existing constrained RL algorithms in continuous control tasks with general hard constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Shutong Ding , Jingya Wang , Yali Du , Ye Shi

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) works impressively in some environments and fails catastrophically in others. Ideally, RL theory should be able to provide an understanding of why this is, i.e. bounds predictive of practical performance.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-15 Cassidy Laidlaw , Stuart Russell , Anca Dragan