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We consider online learning for minimizing regret in unknown, episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous states and actions. We develop variants of the UCRL and posterior sampling algorithms that employ nonparametric Gaussian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-04 Sayak Ray Chowdhury , Aditya Gopalan

We propose a general framework to design posterior sampling methods for model-based RL. We show that the proposed algorithms can be analyzed by reducing regret to Hellinger distance in conditional probability estimation. We further show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Alekh Agarwal , Tong Zhang

Recent advances have significantly improved our understanding of the sample complexity of learning in average-reward Markov decision processes (AMDPs) under the generative model. However, much less is known about the constrained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Yukuan Wei , Xudong Li , Lin F. Yang

The problem of constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) is investigated, where an agent aims to maximize the expected accumulated discounted reward subject to multiple constraints on its utilities/costs. A new primal-dual approach is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-22 Tianjiao Li , Ziwei Guan , Shaofeng Zou , Tengyu Xu , Yingbin Liang , Guanghui Lan

In this work, we consider the regret minimization problem for reinforcement learning in latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDP). In an LMDP, an MDP is randomly drawn from a set of $M$ possible MDPs at the beginning of the interaction, but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-10 Jeongyeol Kwon , Yonathan Efroni , Constantine Caramanis , Shie Mannor

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…

Meta-reinforcement learning has widely been used as a learning-to-learn framework to solve unseen tasks with limited experience. However, the aspect of constraint violations has not been adequately addressed in the existing works, making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Vanshaj Khattar , Yuhao Ding , Bilgehan Sel , Javad Lavaei , Ming Jin

We introduce and analyse two algorithms for exploration-exploitation in discrete and continuous Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) based on exploration bonuses. SCAL$^+$ is a variant of SCAL (Fruit et al., 2018) that performs efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-12 Jian Qian , Ronan Fruit , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

We define the problem of linear Contextual Stochastic Shortest Path (CSSP), where at the beginning of each episode, the learner observes an adversarially chosen context that determines the MDP through a fixed but unknown linear function.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Dor Polikar , Alon Cohen

The problem of reinforcement learning in an unknown and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) under the average-reward criterion is considered, when the learner interacts with the system in a single stream of observations, starting from an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-06 Mohammad Sadegh Talebi , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

Safe reinforcement learning has been a promising approach for optimizing the policy of an agent that operates in safety-critical applications. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, SNO-MDP, that explores and optimizes Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-18 Akifumi Wachi , Yanan Sui

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) is a promising approach for many real-world decision-making problems where ensuring safety is a critical necessity. In safe RL research, while expected cumulative safety constraints (ECSCs) are typically the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Xun Shen , Shuo Jiang , Akifumi Wachi , Kaumune Hashimoto , Sebastien Gros

Achieving sample efficiency in online episodic reinforcement learning (RL) requires optimally balancing exploration and exploitation. When it comes to a finite-horizon episodic Markov decision process with $S$ states, $A$ actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi

In several realistic situations, an interactive learning agent can practice and refine its strategy before going on to be evaluated. For instance, consider a student preparing for a series of tests. She would typically take a few practice…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-08 Sudeep Raja Putta , Theja Tulabandhula

This paper considers the use of a simple posterior sampling algorithm to balance between exploration and exploitation when learning to optimize actions such as in multi-armed bandit problems. The algorithm, also known as Thompson Sampling,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-04 Daniel Russo , Benjamin Van Roy

The applicability of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in real-world domains often requires adherence to safety constraints, a need difficult to address given the asymptotic nature of the classic RL optimization objective. In contrast…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-15 Moritz A. Zanger , Karam Daaboul , J. Marius Zöllner

As an important framework for safe Reinforcement Learning, the Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) has been extensively studied in the recent literature. However, despite the rich results under various on-policy learning settings,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Fan Chen , Junyu Zhang , Zaiwen Wen

In this paper, we study the episodic reinforcement learning (RL) problem modeled by finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with constraint on the number of batches. The multi-batch reinforcement learning framework, where the agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Zihan Zhang , Yuhang Jiang , Yuan Zhou , Xiangyang Ji

We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under drifting non-stationarity, i.e., both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-26 Wang Chi Cheung , David Simchi-Levi , Ruihao Zhu

We propose a new regret minimization algorithm for episodic sparse linear Markov decision process (SMDP) where the state-transition distribution is a linear function of observed features. The only previously known algorithm for SMDP…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-25 Wonyoung Kim , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi