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Policy gradient methods have enjoyed great success in deep reinforcement learning but suffer from high variance of gradient estimates. The high variance problem is particularly exasperated in problems with long horizons or high-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-21 Cathy Wu , Aravind Rajeswaran , Yan Duan , Vikash Kumar , Alexandre M Bayen , Sham Kakade , Igor Mordatch , Pieter Abbeel

We study the estimation of policy gradients for continuous-time systems with known dynamics. By reframing policy learning in continuous-time, we show that it is possible construct a more efficient and accurate gradient estimator. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Samuel Ainsworth , Kendall Lowrey , John Thickstun , Zaid Harchaoui , Siddhartha Srinivasa

State-of-the-art model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches either use gradient-free, population-based methods for planning, learned policy networks, or a combination of policy networks and planning. Hybrid approaches that combine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Jonathan Spieler , Sven Behnke

This paper studies finite-time optimal consumption-investment problems with power, logarithmic and exponential utilities, in a regime switching market with random coefficients, subject to coupled constraints on the consumption and…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-11-11 Ying Hu , Xiaomin Shi , Zuo Quan Xu

Sequence-to-sequence architectures built upon recurrent neural networks have become a standard choice for multi-step-ahead time series prediction. In these models, the decoder produces future values conditioned on contextual inputs,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Qi Sima , Xinze Zhang , Yukun Bao , Siyue Yang , Liang Shen

We present an empirical, gradient-based method for solving data-driven stochastic optimal control problems using the theory of kernel embeddings of distributions. By embedding the integral operator of a stochastic kernel in a reproducing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Adam J. Thorpe , Jake A. Gonzales , Meeko M. K. Oishi

This paper formulates a stochastic optimal control problem for linear networked control systems featuring stochastic packet disordering with a unique stabilizing solution certified. The problem is solved by proposing reinforcement learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-13 Wenqian Xue , Yi Jiang , Frank L. Lewis , Bosen Lian

Sample inefficiency is a long-lasting problem in reinforcement learning (RL). The state-of-the-art estimates the optimal action values while it usually involves an extensive search over the state-action space and unstable optimization.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-27 Kaixiang Lin , Jiayu Zhou

We propose a neural network approach to model general interaction dynamics and an adjoint based stochastic gradient descent algorithm to calibrate its parameters. The parameter calibration problem is considered as optimal control problem…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-01 Simone Göttlich , Claudia Totzeck

A crucial problem in reinforcement learning is learning the optimal policy. We study this in tabular infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes under the online setting. The existing algorithms either fail to achieve regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Xiang Ji , Gen Li

We adapt the ideas underlying the success of Deep Q-Learning to the continuous action domain. We present an actor-critic, model-free algorithm based on the deterministic policy gradient that can operate over continuous action spaces. Using…

Policy-gradient methods have received increased attention recently as a mechanism for learning to act in partially observable environments. They have shown promise for problems admitting memoryless policies but have been less successful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-08 Douglas Aberdeen , Jonathan Baxter

Importance sampling (IS) represents a fundamental technique for a large surge of off-policy reinforcement learning approaches. Policy gradient (PG) methods, in particular, significantly benefit from IS, enabling the effective reuse of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-10 Matteo Papini , Giorgio Manganini , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

Most existing neural network-based approaches for solving stochastic optimal control problems using the associated backward dynamic programming principle rely on the ability to simulate the underlying state variables. However, in some…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-30 Christian Yeo

Stochastic differential equation (SDE) models are the foundation for pricing and hedging financial derivatives. The drift and volatility functions in SDE models are typically chosen to be algebraic functions with a small number (less than…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2024-06-04 Lei Fan , Justin Sirignano

Policy gradient methods have shown success in learning control policies for high-dimensional dynamical systems. Their biggest downside is the amount of exploration they require before yielding high-performing policies. In a lifelong…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-23 Jorge A. Mendez , Boyu Wang , Eric Eaton

Policy gradient based reinforcement learning algorithms coupled with neural networks have shown success in learning complex policies in the model free continuous action space control setting. However, explicitly parameterized policies are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-30 Oliver Richter , Roger Wattenhofer

Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning. Yet, the nonconvexity of policy optimization poses significant challenges in understanding the global convergence of policy gradient methods. For a class of finite-horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-10 Xin Chen , Yifan Hu , Minda Zhao

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 present foundations for using Model Predictive Control (MPC) as a differentiable policy class for reinforcement learning in continuous state and action spaces. This provides one way of leveraging and combining the advantages of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-15 Brandon Amos , Ivan Dario Jimenez Rodriguez , Jacob Sacks , Byron Boots , J. Zico Kolter