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Policy gradient algorithms have driven many recent advancements in language model reasoning. An appealing property is their ability to learn from exploration on their own trajectories, a process crucial for fostering diverse and creative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-13 Aleksei Petrenko , Ben Lipkin , Kevin Chen , Erik Wijmans , Marco Cusumano-Towner , Raja Giryes , Philipp Krähenbühl

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

In this work, we consider policy-based methods for solving the reinforcement learning problem, and establish the sample complexity guarantees. A policy-based algorithm typically consists of an actor and a critic. We consider using various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-16 Zaiwei Chen , Siva Theja Maguluri

This paper introduces two simple techniques to improve off-policy Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms. First, we formulate off-policy RL as a stochastic proximal point iteration. The target network plays the role of the variable of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-04 Marco Maggipinto , Gian Antonio Susto , Pratik Chaudhari

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-03-24 Arthur Charpentier , Romuald Elie , Carl Remlinger

We investigate the challenge of parametrizing policies for reinforcement learning (RL) in high-dimensional continuous action spaces. Our objective is to develop a multimodal policy that overcomes limitations inherent in the commonly-used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Zhiao Huang , Litian Liang , Zhan Ling , Xuanlin Li , Chuang Gan , Hao Su

Reinforcement learning offers the promise of automating the acquisition of complex behavioral skills. However, compared to commonly used and well-understood supervised learning methods, reinforcement learning algorithms can be brittle,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Aviral Kumar , Xue Bin Peng , Sergey Levine

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

Policy optimization is among the most popular and successful reinforcement learning algorithms, and there is increasing interest in understanding its theoretical guarantees. In this work, we initiate the study of policy optimization for the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-08 Liyu Chen , Haipeng Luo , Aviv Rosenberg

In this article, we discuss two algorithms tailored to discrete-time deterministic finite-horizon nonlinear optimal control problems or so-called deterministic trajectory optimization problems. Both algorithms can be derived from an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-10 Mohammad Mahmoudi Filabadi , Tom Lefebvre , Guillaume Crevecoeur

A stochastic-gradient-based interior-point algorithm for minimizing a continuously differentiable objective function (that may be nonconvex) subject to bound constraints is presented, analyzed, and demonstrated through experimental results.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-15 Frank E. Curtis , Vyacheslav Kungurtsev , Daniel P. Robinson , Qi Wang

Evolutionary strategies have recently been shown to achieve competing levels of performance for complex optimization problems in reinforcement learning. In such problems, one often needs to optimize an objective function subject to a set of…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Youssef Diouane , Aurelien Lucchi , Vihang Patil

Policy gradient is a generic and flexible reinforcement learning approach that generally enjoys simplicity in analysis, implementation, and deployment. In the last few decades, this approach has been extensively advanced for fully…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-26 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Yisong Yue , Animashree Anandkumar

We consider policy gradient methods for stochastic optimal control problem in continuous time. In particular, we analyze the gradient flow for the control, viewed as a continuous time limit of the policy gradient method. We prove the global…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Mo Zhou , Jianfeng Lu

We develop a normative framework for hierarchical model-based policy optimization based on applying second-order methods in the space of all possible state-action paths. The resulting natural path gradient performs policy updates in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-03 Daniel McNamee

Guided policy search algorithms have been proven to work with incredible accuracy for not only controlling a complicated dynamical system, but also learning optimal policies from various unseen instances. One assumes true nature of the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-10-02 Prakash Mallick , Zhiyong Chen , Mohsen Zamani

The policy gradient method enjoys the simplicity of the objective where the agent optimizes the cumulative reward directly. Moreover, in the continuous action domain, parameterized distribution of action distribution allows easy control of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-16 Md Masudur Rahman , Yexiang Xue

Inverse Reinforcement Learning addresses the problem of inferring an expert's reward function from demonstrations. However, in many applications, we not only have access to the expert's near-optimal behavior, but we also observe part of her…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-03 Giorgia Ramponi , Gianluca Drappo , Marcello Restelli

Policy iteration is one of the classical frameworks of reinforcement learning, which requires a known initial stabilizing control. However, finding the initial stabilizing control depends on the known system model. To relax this requirement…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-20 Dongdong Li , Jiuxiang Dong

Policy optimization methods with function approximation are widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, it remains elusive how to design such algorithms with statistical guarantees. Leveraging a multi-agent performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Yulai Zhao , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Jason D. Lee