Related papers: Efficient Global Planning in Large MDPs via Stocha…
This technical note studies a class of distributed nonsmooth convex consensus optimization problem. The cost function is a summation of local cost functions which are convex but nonsmooth. Each of the local cost functions consists of a…
We study computationally and statistically efficient Reinforcement Learning algorithms for the linear Bellman Complete setting. This setting uses linear function approximation to capture value functions and unifies existing models like…
Heterogeneous networks comprise agents with varying capabilities in terms of computation, storage, and communication. In such settings, it is crucial to factor in the operating characteristics in allowing agents to choose appropriate…
Markov Decision Processes (MDP) is an useful framework to cast optimal sequential decision making problems. Given any MDP the aim is to find the optimal action selection mechanism i.e., the optimal policy. Typically, the optimal policy…
Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) is a natural framework for reinforcement learning tasks with safety constraints, where agents learn a policy that maximizes the long-term reward while satisfying the constraints on the long-term…
Current frameworks for consensus statement generation with large language models lack the inherent structure needed to provide provable fairness guarantees when aggregating diverse free-form opinions. We model the task as a multi-objective,…
We study reinforcement learning by combining recent advances in regularized linear programming formulations with the classical theory of stochastic approximation. Motivated by the challenge of designing algorithms that leverage off-policy…
In this work, we study two first-order primal-dual based algorithms, the Gradient Primal-Dual Algorithm (GPDA) and the Gradient Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (GADMM), for solving a class of linearly constrained non-convex…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used in modeling decision making problems in stochastic environments. However, precise specification of the reward functions in MDPs is often very difficult. Recent approaches have focused on…
Designing efficient learning algorithms with complexity guarantees for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with large or continuous state and action spaces remains a fundamental challenge. We address this challenge for entropy-regularized MDPs…
In this paper, we develop a distributed mixing-accelerated primal-dual proximal algorithm, referred to as MAP-Pro, which enables nodes in multi-agent networks to cooperatively minimize the sum of their nonconvex, smooth local cost functions…
We propose a method of approximating multivariate Gaussian probabilities using dynamic programming. We show that solving the optimization problem associated with a class of discrete-time finite horizon Markov decision processes with…
We investigate the problem of best policy identification in discounted linear Markov Decision Processes in the fixed confidence setting under a generative model. We first derive an instance-specific lower bound on the expected number of…
In this paper, we propose a distributed stochastic second-order proximal method that enables agents in a network to cooperatively minimize the sum of their local loss functions without any centralized coordination. The proposed algorithm,…
Policy optimization methods with function approximation are widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, it remains elusive how to design such algorithms with statistical guarantees. Leveraging a multi-agent performance…
The paper addresses two variants of the stochastic shortest path problem ('optimize the accumulated weight until reaching a goal state') in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights. The first variant optimizes partial expected…
We study a primal-dual (PD) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for online constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). Despite its widespread practical use, the existing theoretical literature on PD-RL algorithms for this problem only…
The Primal-Dual (PD) algorithm is widely used in convex optimization to determine saddle points. While the stability of the PD algorithm can be easily guaranteed, strict contraction is nontrivial to establish in most cases. This work…
In this paper, we study the learning of safe policies in the setting of reinforcement learning problems. This is, we aim to control a Markov Decision Process (MDP) of which we do not know the transition probabilities, but we have access to…
We consider the stochastic shortest path planning problem in MDPs, i.e., the problem of designing policies that ensure reaching a goal state from a given initial state with minimum accrued cost. In order to account for rare but important…