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We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm derived from a regularized linear-programming formulation of optimal control in MDPs. The method is closely related to the classic Relative Entropy Policy Search (REPS) algorithm of Peters…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Joan Bas-Serrano , Sebastian Curi , Andreas Krause , Gergely Neu

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) based on the entropic risk measure. Although existing works have established non-asymptotic regret guarantees for this problem, they leave open an exponential gap between the upper and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-09 Yingjie Fei , Zhuoran Yang , Yudong Chen , Zhaoran Wang

In this paper we consider the basic version of Reinforcement Learning (RL) that involves computing optimal data driven (adaptive) policies for Markovian decision process with unknown transition probabilities. We provide a brief survey of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-16 Wesley Cowan , Michael N. Katehakis , Daniel Pirutinsky

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) aims at learning an optimal strategy using a pre-collected dataset without further interactions with the environment. While various algorithms have been proposed for offline RL in the previous literature,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-02 Wei Xiong , Han Zhong , Chengshuai Shi , Cong Shen , Liwei Wang , Tong Zhang

We study tabular reinforcement learning problems with multiple steps of lookahead information. Before acting, the learner observes $\ell$ steps of future transition and reward realizations: the exact state the agent would reach and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Nadav Merlis

This paper is concerned with offline reinforcement learning (RL), which learns using pre-collected data without further exploration. Effective offline RL would be able to accommodate distribution shift and limited data coverage. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-11 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi , Yuting Wei

This paper is devoted to the extension of the regret lower bound beyond ergodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the problem dependent setting. While the regret lower bound for ergodic MDPs is well-known and reached by tractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Victor Boone , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

The classical theory of reinforcement learning (RL) has focused on tabular and linear representations of value functions. Further progress hinges on combining RL with modern function approximators such as kernel functions and deep neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Zhuoran Yang , Chi Jin , Zhaoran Wang , Mengdi Wang , Michael I. Jordan

Strong worst-case performance bounds for episodic reinforcement learning exist but fortunately in practice RL algorithms perform much better than such bounds would predict. Algorithms and theory that provide strong problem-dependent bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

Despite impressive results, reinforcement learning (RL) suffers from slow convergence and requires a large variety of tuning strategies. In this paper, we investigate the ability of RL algorithms on simple continuous control tasks. We show…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-02-16 Daniel Layeghi , Steve Tonneau , Michael Mistry

Learning Markov decision processes (MDP) in an adversarial environment has been a challenging problem. The problem becomes even more challenging with function approximation, since the underlying structure of the loss function and transition…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-15 Fang Kong , Xiangcheng Zhang , Baoxiang Wang , Shuai Li

While a large body of empirical results show that temporally-extended actions and options may significantly affect the learning performance of an agent, the theoretical understanding of how and when options can be beneficial in online…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-04-18 Ronan Fruit , Alessandro Lazaric

Off-policy deep reinforcement learning (RL) typically leverages replay buffers for reusing past experiences during learning. This can help improve sample efficiency when the collected data is informative and aligned with the learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Jiashun Liu , Johan Obando-Ceron , Pablo Samuel Castro , Aaron Courville , Ling Pan

General function approximation is a powerful tool to handle large state and action spaces in a broad range of reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios. However, theoretical understanding of non-stationary MDPs with general function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Songtao Feng , Ming Yin , Ruiquan Huang , Yu-Xiang Wang , Jing Yang , Yingbin Liang

While quantum reinforcement learning (RL) has attracted a surge of attention recently, its theoretical understanding is limited. In particular, it remains elusive how to design provably efficient quantum RL algorithms that can address the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-06-14 Han Zhong , Jiachen Hu , Yecheng Xue , Tongyang Li , Liwei Wang

Reinforcement learning (RL) so far has limited real-world applications. One key challenge is that typical RL algorithms heavily rely on a reset mechanism to sample proper initial states; these reset mechanisms, in practice, are expensive to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Hoai-An Nguyen , Ching-An Cheng

We study matrix estimation problems arising in reinforcement learning (RL) with low-rank structure. In low-rank bandits, the matrix to be recovered specifies the expected arm rewards, and for low-rank Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Stefan Stojanovic , Yassir Jedra , Alexandre Proutiere

Motivated by applications in service systems, we consider queueing systems where each customer must be handled by a server with the right skill set. We focus on optimizing the routing of customers to servers in order to maximize the total…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Sanne van Kempen , Jaron Sanders , Fiona Sloothaak , Maarten G. Wolf

There has been growing progress on theoretical analyses for provably efficient learning in MDPs with linear function approximation, but much of the existing work has made strong assumptions to enable exploration by conventional exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-23 Andrea Zanette , Alessandro Lazaric , Mykel J. Kochenderfer , Emma Brunskill

Distributional reinforcement learning improves performance by capturing environmental stochasticity, but a comprehensive theoretical understanding of its effectiveness remains elusive. In addition, the intractable element of the infinite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-14 Taehyun Cho , Seungyub Han , Seokhun Ju , Dohyeong Kim , Kyungjae Lee , Jungwoo Lee