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Nonlinear control systems with partial information to the decision maker are prevalent in a variety of applications. As a step toward studying such nonlinear systems, this work explores reinforcement learning methods for finding the optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-11 Yinbin Han , Meisam Razaviyayn , Renyuan Xu

We prove convergence of the proximal policy gradient method for a class of constrained stochastic control problems with control in both the drift and diffusion of the state process. The problem requires either the running or terminal cost…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-27 Ashley Davey , Harry Zheng

This paper is on learning the Kalman gain by policy optimization method. Firstly, we reformulate the finite-horizon Kalman filter as a policy optimization problem of the dual system. Secondly, we obtain the global linear convergence of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-30 Haoran Li , Yuan-Hua Ni

This paper proposes and analyzes two new policy learning methods: regularized policy gradient (RPG) and iterative policy optimization (IPO), for a class of discounted linear-quadratic control (LQC) problems over an infinite time horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-08 Xin Guo , Xinyu Li , Renyuan Xu

Policy gradient methods are a powerful family of reinforcement learning algorithms for continuous control that optimize a policy directly. However, standard first-order methods often converge slowly. Second-order methods can accelerate…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-05 Amirreza Valaei , Arash Bahari Kordabad , Sadegh Soudjani

We study the policy gradient method (PGM) for the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) dynamic output-feedback control problem using an input-output-history (IOH) representation of the closed-loop system. First, we show that any dynamic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-23 Tomonori Sadamoto , Takashi Tanaka

We propose a gradient-based method for quadratic programming problems with a single linear constraint and bounds on the variables. Inspired by the GPCG algorithm for bound-constrained convex quadratic programming [J.J. Mor\'e and G.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-19 Daniela di Serafino , Gerardo Toraldo , Marco Viola , Jesse Barlow

We study the discrete-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control model using reinforcement learning (RL). Using entropy to measure the cost of exploration, we prove that the optimal feedback policy for the problem must be Gaussian type. Then, we…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-05 Lucky Li

Recent developments in Reinforcement learning have significantly enhanced sequential decision-making in uncertain environments. Despite their strong performance guarantees, most existing work has focused primarily on improving the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-08-13 Bo Pan , Jianya Lu , Yafei Wang , Hao Li , Bei Jiang , Linglong Kong

Recently, policy optimization for control purposes has received renewed attention due to the increasing interest in reinforcement learning. In this paper, we investigate the global convergence of gradient-based policy optimization methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-25 Joao Paulo Jansch-Porto , Bin Hu , Geir Dullerud

In this paper, we revisit and improve the convergence of policy gradient (PG), natural PG (NPG) methods, and their variance-reduced variants, under general smooth policy parametrizations. More specifically, with the Fisher information…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-17 Yanli Liu , Kaiqing Zhang , Tamer Başar , Wotao Yin

We revisit the finite time analysis of policy gradient methods in the one of the simplest settings: finite state and action MDPs with a policy class consisting of all stochastic policies and with exact gradient evaluations. There has been…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Jalaj Bhandari , Daniel Russo

Constrained Reinforcement Learning (CRL) addresses sequential decision-making problems where agents are required to achieve goals by maximizing the expected return while meeting domain-specific constraints. In this setting, policy-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Alessandro Montenegro , Leonardo Cesani , Marco Mussi , Matteo Papini , Alberto Maria Metelli

In this paper, we propose a new policy iteration algorithm to compute the value function and the optimal controls of continuous time stochastic control problems. The algorithm relies on successive approximations using linear-quadratic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-09 Dylan Possamaï , Ludovic Tangpi

This paper is concerned with the Coherent Quantum Linear Quadratic Gaussian (CQLQG) control problem of finding a stabilizing measurement-free quantum controller for a quantum plant so as to minimize an infinite-horizon mean square…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-02-03 Arash Kh. Sichani , Igor G. Vladimirov , Ian R. Petersen

While the techniques in optimal control theory are often model-based, the policy optimization (PO) approach directly optimizes the performance metric of interest. Even though it has been an essential approach for reinforcement learning…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-23 Feiran Zhao , Keyou You , Tamer Başar

We present a policy iteration algorithm for the infinite-horizon N-player general-sum deterministic linear quadratic dynamic games and compare it to policy gradient methods. We demonstrate that the proposed policy iteration algorithm is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-07 Yuxiang Guan , Giulio Salizzoni , Maryam Kamgarpour , Tyler H. Summers

In this paper, we consider continuous-time stochastic optimal control problems where the cost is evaluated through a coherent risk measure. We provide an explicit gradient descent-ascent algorithm which applies to problems subject to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-23 Gabriel Velho , Jean Auriol , Riccardo Bonalli

Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Jalaj Bhandari , Daniel Russo

We propose the Polytopic Receding-Horizon Policy Gradient (P-RHPG) algorithm for synthesizing Parallel Distributed Compensation (PDC) controllers via Tensor Product (TP) model transformation. Standard LMI-based PDC synthesis grows…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-01 Shiva Shakeri , Péter Baranyi , Mehran Mesbahi