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Robust real-world learning should benefit from both demonstrations and interactions with the environment. Current approaches to learning from demonstration and reward perform supervised learning on expert demonstration data and use…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-05-31 Yang Gao , Huazhe Xu , Ji Lin , Fisher Yu , Sergey Levine , Trevor Darrell

Reinforcement learning constantly deals with hard integrals, for example when computing expectations in policy evaluation and policy iteration. These integrals are rarely analytically solvable and typically estimated with the Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Sebastien M. R. Arnold , Pierre L'Ecuyer , Liyu Chen , Yi-fan Chen , Fei Sha

Optimization of parameterized policies for reinforcement learning (RL) is an important and challenging problem in artificial intelligence. Among the most common approaches are algorithms based on gradient ascent of a score function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-15 Sriram Srinivasan , Marc Lanctot , Vinicius Zambaldi , Julien Perolat , Karl Tuyls , Remi Munos , Michael Bowling

Applying reinforcement learning (RL) to sparse reward domains is notoriously challenging due to insufficient guiding signals. Common RL techniques for addressing such domains include (1) learning from demonstrations and (2) curriculum…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-29 Vaibhav Bajaj , Guni Sharon , Peter Stone

For reinforcement learning in the real world online exploration is expensive A common practice in robotic reinforcement learning is to incorporate additional data to improve sample efficiency Expert demonstration data is often crucial for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Daniel Palenicek , Florian Vogt , Joe Watson , Ingmar Posner , Danica Kragic , Jan Peters

Balancing reward and safety in constrained reinforcement learning remains challenging due to poor generalization from sharp value minima and inadequate handling of heavy-tailed risk distribution. We introduce Safe Langevin Soft Actor-Critic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Mahesh Keswani , Samyak Jain , Raunak P. Bhattacharyya

In the context of a short video & live stream mixed recommendation scenario, the live stream recommendation system (RS) decides whether to allocate at most one live stream into the video feed for each user request. To maximize long-term…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Jingxin Liu , Xiang Gao , Yisha Li , Xin Li , Haiyang Lu , Ben Wang

Optimizing or sampling complex cost functions of combinatorial optimization problems is a longstanding challenge across disciplines and applications. When employing family of conventional algorithms based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-15 Dmitrii Dobrynin , Masoud Mohseni , John Paul Strachan

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

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful tool for tackling control problems, but its practical application is often hindered by the complexity arising from intricate reward functions with multiple terms. The reward hypothesis…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Kilian Freitag , Kristian Ceder , Rita Laezza , Knut Åkesson , Morteza Haghir Chehreghani

This paper presents a novel approach to multi-agent reinforcement learning (RL) for linear systems with convex polytopic constraints. Existing work on RL has demonstrated the use of model predictive control (MPC) as a function approximator…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-01-06 Samuel Mallick , Filippo Airaldi , Azita Dabiri , Bart De Schutter

This study develops and evaluates a deep reinforcement learning framework for dynamic portfolio allocation across global equity markets. The Soft Actor-Critic algorithm is used to learn continuous portfolio weights within a Markov Decision…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-05-19 Kamil Kashif , Robert Ślepaczuk

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) improves sample efficiency by leveraging learned dynamics models for policy optimization. However, the effectiveness of methods such as actor-critic is often limited by compounding model errors,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-01 Chengyang Gu , Yuxin Pan , Hui Xiong , Yize Chen

In this paper, we devise a distributional framework on actor-critic as a solution to distributional instability, action type restriction, and conflation between samples and statistics. We propose a new method that minimizes the Cram\'er…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Daniel Wontae Nam , Younghoon Kim , Chan Y. Park

We present a scalable and effective exploration strategy based on Thompson sampling for reinforcement learning (RL). One of the key shortcomings of existing Thompson sampling algorithms is the need to perform a Gaussian approximation of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Haque Ishfaq , Qingfeng Lan , Pan Xu , A. Rupam Mahmood , Doina Precup , Anima Anandkumar , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli

Credit assignment is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). Classical actor-critic methods address this challenge through fine-grained advantage estimation based on a learned value function. However, learned value models are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Zikang Shan , Han Zhong , Liwei Wang , Li Zhao

We identify two issues with the family of algorithms based on the Adversarial Imitation Learning framework. The first problem is implicit bias present in the reward functions used in these algorithms. While these biases might work well for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-16 Ilya Kostrikov , Kumar Krishna Agrawal , Debidatta Dwibedi , Sergey Levine , Jonathan Tompson

In this paper, we study the continuous-time multi-asset mean-variance (MV) portfolio selection using a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, specifically the soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithm, in the time-varying financial market. A family…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2025-05-13 Yu Li , Yuhan Wu , Shuhua Zhang

In recommendation systems, diversity and novelty are essential for capturing varied user preferences and encouraging exploration, yet many systems prioritize click relevance. While reinforcement learning (RL) has been explored to improve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Jiin Woo , Alireza Bagheri Garakani , Tianchen Zhou , Zhishen Huang , Yan Gao

The application of deep reinforcement learning algorithms to economic battery dispatch problems has significantly increased recently. However, optimizing battery dispatch over long horizons can be challenging due to delayed rewards. In our…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-08 Manuel Sage , Martin Staniszewski , Yaoyao Fiona Zhao