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Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are receiving much attention in learning a robust policy which is less sensitive to environment changes. There are an increasing number of works analyzing sample-efficiency of robust MDPs. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Wenhao Yang , Han Wang , Tadashi Kozuno , Scott M. Jordan , Zhihua Zhang

We propose an actor-critic, model-free, and online Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework for continuous-state continuous-action Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the reward is highly sparse but encompasses a high-level temporal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-26 Lim Zun Yuan , Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening

We consider deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) in the context of reinforcement learning with sparse rewards. To enhance exploration, we introduce a search procedure, \emph{${\epsilon}{t}$-greedy}, which generates exploratory options…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Ehsan Futuhi , Shayan Karimi , Chao Gao , Martin Müller

Practical reinforcement learning problems are often formulated as constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problems, in which the agent has to maximize the expected return while satisfying a set of prescribed safety constraints. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-23 Shin-ichi Maeda , Hayato Watahiki , Shintarou Okada , Masanori Koyama

We introduce Dynamic Contextual Markov Decision Processes (DCMDPs), a novel reinforcement learning framework for history-dependent environments that generalizes the contextual MDP framework to handle non-Markov environments, where contexts…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-19 Guy Tennenholtz , Nadav Merlis , Lior Shani , Martin Mladenov , Craig Boutilier

We revisit the estimation bias in policy gradients for the discounted episodic Markov decision process (MDP) from Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) perspective. The objective is formulated theoretically as the expected returns discounted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-13 Haoxuan Pan , Deheng Ye , Xiaoming Duan , Qiang Fu , Wei Yang , Jianping He , Mingfei Sun

We study off-dynamics Reinforcement Learning (RL), where the policy is trained on a source domain and deployed to a distinct target domain. We aim to solve this problem via online distributionally robust Markov decision processes (DRMDPs),…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

Generating collision-free motion in dynamic, partially observable environments is a fundamental challenge for robotic manipulators. Classical motion planners can compute globally optimal trajectories but require full environment knowledge…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Jiahui Yang , Jason Jingzhou Liu , Yulong Li , Youssef Khaky , Kenneth Shaw , Deepak Pathak

We consider a robust approach to address uncertainty in model parameters in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), which are widely used to model dynamic optimization in many applications. Most prior works consider the case where the uncertainty…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-02 Vineet Goyal , Julien Grand-Clément

Generative models, particularly diffusion models, have achieved remarkable success in density estimation for multimodal data, drawing significant interest from the reinforcement learning (RL) community, especially in policy modeling in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Jinouwen Zhang , Rongkun Xue , Yazhe Niu , Yun Chen , Jing Yang , Hongsheng Li , Yu Liu

The constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) framework emerges as an important reinforcement learning approach for imposing safety or other critical objectives while maximizing cumulative reward. However, the current understanding of how…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Tian Tian , Lin F. Yang , Csaba Szepesvári

Reinforcement learning considers the problem of finding policies that maximize an expected cumulative reward in a Markov decision process with unknown transition probabilities. In this paper we consider the problem of finding optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-19 Santiago Paternain , Juan Andres Bazerque , Alejandro Ribeiro

Projected policy gradient under the simplex parameterization, policy gradient and natural policy gradient under the softmax parameterization, are fundamental algorithms in reinforcement learning. There have been a flurry of recent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-12 Jiacai Liu , Wenye Li , Ke Wei

The sim-to-real gap, which represents the disparity between training and testing environments, poses a significant challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). A promising approach to addressing this challenge is distributionally robust RL,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Miao Lu , Han Zhong , Tong Zhang , Jose Blanchet

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

Novel advanced policy gradient (APG) algorithms, such as proximal policy optimization (PPO), trust region policy optimization, and their variations, have become the dominant reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms because of their ease of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-05 Mark Gluzman

Reach-Avoid-Stay (RAS) optimal control enables systems such as robots and air taxis to reach their targets, avoid obstacles, and stay near the target. However, current methods for RAS often struggle with handling complex, dynamic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-10-10 Gabriel Chenevert , Jingqi Li , Achyuta kannan , Sangjae Bae , Donggun Lee

Reinforcement Learning is a powerful framework for training agents to navigate different situations, but it is susceptible to changes in environmental dynamics. However, solving Markov Decision Processes that are robust to changes is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Etash Kumar Guha

In many operations management problems, we need to make decisions sequentially to minimize the cost while satisfying certain constraints. One modeling approach to study such problems is constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). When…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-01-27 Yi Chen , Jing Dong , Zhaoran Wang

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