English
Related papers

Related papers: On Representation Complexity of Model-based and Mo…

200 papers

This work introduces Bilinear Classes, a new structural framework, which permit generalization in reinforcement learning in a wide variety of settings through the use of function approximation. The framework incorporates nearly all existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Simon S. Du , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Shachar Lovett , Gaurav Mahajan , Wen Sun , Ruosong Wang

Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is inherently a reactive method, operating under the assumption that it starts with no prior knowledge of the system and entirely depends on trial-and-error for learning. This approach faces several…

The aim of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real-world applications is to create systems capable of making autonomous decisions by learning from their environment through trial and error. This paper emphasizes the importance of reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Sinan Ibrahim , Mostafa Mostafa , Ali Jnadi , Hadi Salloum , Pavel Osinenko

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) address the challenge of model uncertainty by optimizing the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. In this paper, we focus on the robust average-reward MDPs under the model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-19 Yue Wang , Alvaro Velasquez , George Atia , Ashley Prater-Bennette , Shaofeng Zou

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a classical tool to solve network control or policy optimization problems in unknown environments. The original Q-learning suffers from performance and complexity challenges across very large networks. Herein,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-02 Talha Bozkus , Urbashi Mitra

Reinforcement learning (RL) is attracting attention as an effective way to solve sequential optimization problems that involve high dimensional state/action space and stochastic uncertainties. Many such problems involve constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-01 Haeun Yoo , Victor M. Zavala , Jay H. Lee

This paper presents a reinforcement learning approach of a model-free safety filter, drawing inspiration from the framework of model-based Predictive Safety Filters (PSFs). Similar to conventional PSFs, our method adopts a Quadratic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Bihui Yin , Yiwen Lu , Yuchen Jiang , Yilin Mo

In recent years, $Q$-learning has become indispensable for model-free reinforcement learning (MFRL). However, it suffers from well-known problems such as under- and overestimation bias of the value, which may adversely affect the policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Youngmin Oh , Jinwoo Shin , Eunho Yang , Sung Ju Hwang

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

Robust reinforcement learning (RRL) aims at seeking a robust policy to optimize the worst case performance over an uncertainty set of Markov decision processes (MDPs). This set contains some perturbed MDPs from a nominal MDP (N-MDP) that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-21 Ukjo Hwang , Songnam Hong

Modern deep learning methods provide effective means to learn good representations. However, is a good representation itself sufficient for sample efficient reinforcement learning? This question has largely been studied only with respect to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-02 Simon S. Du , Sham M. Kakade , Ruosong Wang , Lin F. Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful framework for decision-making in uncertain environments, but it often requires large amounts of data to learn an optimal policy. We address this challenge by incorporating prior model knowledge to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-29 J. S. van Hulst , W. P. M. H. Heemels , D. J. Antunes

In recent years, deep reinforcement learning has emerged as a technique to solve closed-loop flow control problems. Employing simulation-based environments in reinforcement learning enables a priori end-to-end optimization of the control…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2024-04-11 Andre Weiner , Janis Geise

We study the problem of representation transfer in offline Reinforcement Learning (RL), where a learner has access to episodic data from a number of source tasks collected a priori, and aims to learn a shared representation to be used in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Avinandan Bose , Simon Shaolei Du , Maryam Fazel

Reinforcement learning algorithms typically assume rewards to be sampled from light-tailed distributions, such as Gaussian or bounded. However, a wide variety of real-world systems generate rewards that follow heavy-tailed distributions. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Vincent Zhuang , Yanan Sui

The use of Potential-Based Reward Shaping (PBRS) has shown great promise in the ongoing research effort to tackle sample inefficiency in Reinforcement Learning (RL). However, choosing the right potential function remains an open challenge.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Giuseppe Canonaco , Leo Ardon , Alberto Pozanco , Daniel Borrajo

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) has shown its advantages in sample-efficiency over model-free reinforcement learning (MFRL). Despite the impressive results it achieves, it still faces a trade-off between the ease of data…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Xiaoyu Tan , Chao Qu , Junwu Xiong , James Zhang

To achieve sample efficiency in reinforcement learning (RL), it necessitates efficiently exploring the underlying environment. Under the offline setting, addressing the exploration challenge lies in collecting an offline dataset with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Shuang Qiu , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang , Zhuoran Yang

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) can acquire complex behaviors from low-level inputs, such as images. However, real-world applications of such methods require generalizing to the vast variability of the real world. Deep networks are known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-13 Chelsea Finn , Tianhe Yu , Justin Fu , Pieter Abbeel , Sergey Levine

It is believed that a model-based approach for reinforcement learning (RL) is the key to reduce sample complexity. However, the understanding of the sample optimality of model-based RL is still largely missing, even for the linear case.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Qiwen Cui , Lin F. Yang