Related papers: Risk-Averse Reinforcement Learning via Dynamic Tim…

Popular Maximum Entropy Inverse Reinforcement Learning approaches require the computation of expected state visitation frequencies for the optimal policy under an estimate of the reward function. This usually requires intermediate value…

We study the setting of \emph{performative reinforcement learning} where the deployed policy affects both the reward, and the transition of the underlying Markov decision process. Prior work~\parencite{MTR23} has addressed this problem…

Continuous-time nonlinear optimal control problems hold great promise in real-world applications. After decades of development, reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved some of the greatest successes as a general nonlinear control design…

Safe reinforcement learning tasks are a challenging domain despite being very common in the real world. The widely adopted CMDP model constrains the risks in expectation, which makes room for dangerous behaviors in long-tail states. In…

We study reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation, where the agent works in two phases: (1) in the exploration phase, the agent interacts with the environment but cannot access the reward; and (2) in the…

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

The standard RL world model is that of a Markov Decision Process (MDP). A basic premise of MDPs is that the rewards depend on the last state and action only. Yet, many real-world rewards are non-Markovian. For example, a reward for bringing…

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

This paper analyzes reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the average-reward criterion. We focus on Q-learning algorithms based on relative value iteration (RVI), which are model-free stochastic…

Risk sensitivity has become a central theme in reinforcement learning (RL), where convex risk measures and robust formulations provide principled ways to model preferences beyond expected return. Recent extensions to multi-agent RL (MARL)…

Value-at-risk (VaR), also known as quantile, is a crucial risk measure in finance and other fields. However, optimizing VaR metrics in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is challenging because VaR is non-additive and the traditional dynamic…

Traditional portfolio management methods can incorporate specific investor preferences but rely on accurate forecasts of asset returns and covariances. Reinforcement learning (RL) methods do not rely on these explicit forecasts and are…

Although Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found tremendous success in simulated domains, they often cannot directly be applied to physical systems, especially in cases where there are hard constraints to satisfy (e.g. on safety…

Maximising a cumulative reward function that is Markov and stationary, i.e., defined over state-action pairs and independent of time, is sufficient to capture many kinds of goals in a Markov decision process (MDP). However, not all goals…

Recently, adversarial imitation learning has shown a scalable reward acquisition method for inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) problems. However, estimated reward signals often become uncertain and fail to train a reliable statistical…

One of the fundamental challenges associated with reinforcement learning (RL) is that collecting sufficient data can be both time-consuming and expensive. In this paper, we formalize a concept of time reversal symmetry in a Markov decision…

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a classical tool to solve network control or policy optimization problems in unknown environments. The original Q-learning suffers from performance and complexity challenges across very large networks. Herein,…

Due to the nature of risk management in learning applicable policies, risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RSRL) has been realized as an important direction. RSRL is usually achieved by learning risk-sensitive objectives characterized by…

A novel reinforcement learning scheme to synthesize policies for continuous-space Markov decision processes (MDPs) is proposed. This scheme enables one to apply model-free, off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithms for finite MDPs to…

Most conventional Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms aim to optimize decision-making rules in terms of the expected returns. However, especially for risk management purposes, other risk-sensitive criteria such as the value-at-risk or…