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We consider the problem of preference based reinforcement learning (PbRL), where, unlike traditional reinforcement learning, an agent receives feedback only in terms of a 1 bit (0/1) preference over a trajectory pair instead of absolute…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Aldo Pacchiano , Aadirupa Saha , Jonathan Lee

Motivated by the prevailing paradigm of using unsupervised learning for efficient exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) problems [tang2017exploration,bellemare2016unifying], we investigate when this paradigm is provably efficient. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-02 Fei Feng , Ruosong Wang , Wotao Yin , Simon S. Du , Lin F. Yang

In this paper, we introduce Randomized Q-learning (RandQL), a novel randomized model-free algorithm for regret minimization in episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). To the best of our knowledge, RandQL is the first tractable model-free…

Continuous-time Markov decision processes (CTMDPs) are canonical models to express sequential decision-making under dense-time and stochastic environments. When the stochastic evolution of the environment is only available via sampling,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-17 Amin Falah , Shibashis Guha , Ashutosh Trivedi

Reactive synthesis algorithms allow automatic construction of policies to control an environment modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) that are optimal with respect to high-level temporal logic specifications. However, they assume that…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2022-05-31 Rajeev Alur , Suguman Bansal , Osbert Bastani , Kishor Jothimurugan

This paper concerns the central issues of model robustness and sample efficiency in offline reinforcement learning (RL), which aims to learn to perform decision making from history data without active exploration. Due to uncertainties and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

Real-world reinforcement learning is often \emph{nonstationary}: rewards and dynamics drift, accelerate, oscillate, and trigger abrupt switches in the optimal action. Existing theory often represents nonstationarity with coarse-scale models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Zuyuan Zhang , Mahdi Imani , Tian Lan

We study learning in periodic Markov Decision Process (MDP), a special type of non-stationary MDP where both the state transition probabilities and reward functions vary periodically, under the average reward maximization setting. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-20 Ayush Aniket , Arpan Chattopadhyay

We study reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the finite-horizon episodic setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, the inter-transition times of a continuous-time MDP are exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

We present the E-UC$^3$RL algorithm for regret minimization in Stochastic Contextual Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs). The algorithm operates under the minimal assumptions of realizable function class and access to \emph{offline} least…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-30 Orin Levy , Asaf Cassel , Alon Cohen , Yishay Mansour

Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful approach for learning control policies directly from high-dimensional state and observation. However, it tends to be data-inefficient, which is especially costly in robotic learning…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-10-14 Xubo Lyu , Mo Chen

Non-stationary parametric bandits have attracted much attention recently. There are three principled ways to deal with non-stationarity, including sliding-window, weighted, and restart strategies. As many non-stationary environments exhibit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Jing Wang , Peng Zhao , Zhi-Hua Zhou

We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-29 Eugene A. Feinberg , Anna Jaśkiewicz , Andrzej S. Nowak

We study multi-task reinforcement learning (RL) in tabular episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs). We formulate a heterogeneous multi-player RL problem, in which a group of players concurrently face similar but not necessarily identical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-19 Chicheng Zhang , Zhi Wang

We study reinforcement learning with multinomial logistic (MNL) function approximation where the underlying transition probability kernel of the Markov decision processes (MDPs) is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-01 Wooseong Cho , Taehyun Hwang , Joongkyu Lee , Min-hwan Oh

We consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with deterministic transitions and study the problem of regret minimization, which is central to the analysis and design of optimal learning algorithms. We present logarithmic problem-specific…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Damianos Tranos , Alexandre Proutiere

Most reinforcement learning methods are based upon the key assumption that the transition dynamics and reward functions are fixed, that is, the underlying Markov decision process is stationary. However, in many real-world applications, this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-23 Yash Chandak , Georgios Theocharous , Shiv Shankar , Martha White , Sridhar Mahadevan , Philip S. Thomas

Motivated by real-world settings where data collection and policy deployment -- whether for a single agent or across multiple agents -- are costly, we study the problem of on-policy single-agent reinforcement learning (RL) and federated RL…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-11 Haochen Zhang , Zhong Zheng , Lingzhou Xue

This paper considers the best policy identification (BPI) problem in online Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs). We are interested in algorithms that are model-free, have low regret, and identify an approximately optimal policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Zihan Zhou , Honghao Wei , Lei Ying

We study model-based reinforcement learning in an unknown finite communicating Markov decision process. We propose a simple algorithm that leverages a variance based confidence interval. We show that the proposed algorithm, UCRL-V, achieves…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-12 Aristide Tossou , Debabrota Basu , Christos Dimitrakakis