English
Related papers

Related papers: Posterior Sampling-based Online Learning for Episo…

200 papers

We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) based on spectral decomposition methods. While spectral methods have been previously employed for consistent learning of (passive)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-20 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

Most provably-efficient learning algorithms introduce optimism about poorly-understood states and actions to encourage exploration. We study an alternative approach for efficient exploration, posterior sampling for reinforcement learning…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-12-30 Ian Osband , Daniel Russo , Benjamin Van Roy

We present an algorithm based on posterior sampling (aka Thompson sampling) that achieves near-optimal worst-case regret bounds when the underlying Markov Decision Process (MDP) is communicating with a finite, though unknown, diameter. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-01 Shipra Agrawal , Randy Jia

The problem of piecewise affine (PWA) regression and planning is of foundational importance to the study of online learning, control, and robotics, where it provides a theoretically and empirically tractable setting to study systems…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-20 Adam Block , Max Simchowitz , Russ Tedrake

This paper studies the fundamental limits of reinforcement learning (RL) in the challenging \emph{partially observable} setting. While it is well-established that learning in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) requires…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-03 Fan Chen , Huan Wang , Caiming Xiong , Song Mei , Yu Bai

In this paper, we propose new problem-independent lower bounds on the sample complexity and regret in episodic MDPs, with a particular focus on the non-stationary case in which the transition kernel is allowed to change in each stage of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-09 Omar Darwiche Domingues , Pierre Ménard , Emilie Kaufmann , Michal Valko

We propose a practical non-episodic PSRL algorithm that unlike recent state-of-the-art PSRL algorithms uses a deterministic, model-independent episode switching schedule. Our algorithm termed deterministic schedule PSRL (DS-PSRL) is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Georgios Theocharous , Zheng Wen , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Nikos Vlassis

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Vincent Leon , S. Rasoul Etesami

This paper investigates the combination of model predictive control (MPC) concepts and posterior sampling techniques and proposes a simple constraint tightening technique to introduce cautiousness during explorative learning episodes. The…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-09-22 Kim P. Wabersich , Melanie N. Zeilinger

We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) based on spectral decomposition methods. While spectral methods have been previously employed for consistent learning of (passive)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-20 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

We study reinforcement learning in MDPs whose transition function is stochastic at most steps but may behave adversarially at a fixed subset of $\Lambda$ steps per episode. This model captures environments that are stable except at a few…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Ofir Schlisselberg , Tal Lancewicki , Yishay Mansour

We study a posterior sampling approach to efficient exploration in constrained reinforcement learning. Alternatively to existing algorithms, we propose two simple algorithms that are more efficient statistically, simpler to implement and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-09 Danil Provodin , Pratik Gajane , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Maurits Kaptein

In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic reinforcement learning - a new variant of reinforcement learning problems where the regret of selecting a suboptimal action varies under an external environmental condition known as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-26 Xiaoxiao Wang , Nader Bouacida , Xueying Guo , Xin Liu

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a general mathematical model for sequential decision-making in stochastic environments under state uncertainty. POMDPs are often solved \textit{online}, which enables the algorithm…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-26 Yunuo Zhang , Baiting Luo , Ayan Mukhopadhyay , Abhishek Dubey

We consider the problem of learning an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP) that is weakly communicating in the infinite horizon setting. We propose a Thompson Sampling-based reinforcement learning algorithm with dynamic episodes (TSDE).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-09-15 Yi Ouyang , Mukul Gagrani , Ashutosh Nayyar , Rahul Jain

Real-world sequential decision making problems commonly involve partial observability, which requires the agent to maintain a memory of history in order to infer the latent states, plan and make good decisions. Coping with partial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-09 Yonathan Efroni , Chi Jin , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Sobhan Miryoosefi

We investigate the hardness of online reinforcement learning in fixed horizon, sparse linear Markov decision process (MDP), with a special focus on the high-dimensional regime where the ambient dimension is larger than the number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-11 Botao Hao , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári , Mengdi Wang

We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu , Luca Viano

In this paper, we study the problem of online sparse linear regression (OSLR) where the algorithms are restricted to accessing only $k$ out of $d$ attributes per instance for prediction, which was proved to be NP-hard. Previous work gave…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Junfan Li , Shizhong Liao , Zenglin Xu , Liqiang Nie

Existing episodic reinforcement algorithms assume that the length of an episode is fixed across time and known a priori. In this paper, we consider a general framework of episodic reinforcement learning when the length of each episode is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-08 Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic , Jiarui Gan , Adish Singla , Rupak Majumdar