Related papers: Improved Sample Complexity Analysis of Natural Pol…

In contrast to the advances in characterizing the sample complexity for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs), the optimal statistical complexity for solving constrained MDPs (CMDPs) remains unknown. We resolve this question by providing…

We consider finite horizon Markov decision processes under performance measures that involve both the mean and the variance of the cumulative reward. We show that either randomized or history-based policies can improve performance. We prove…

We establish an optimal sample complexity of $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ for obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal global policy using a single-timescale actor-critic (AC) algorithm in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) with…

Importance sampling has become an indispensable strategy to speed up optimization algorithms for large-scale applications. Improved adaptive variants - using importance values defined by the complete gradient information which changes…

In this paper, we propose a novel policy iteration method, called dynamic policy programming (DPP), to estimate the optimal policy in the infinite-horizon Markov decision processes. We prove the finite-iteration and asymptotic l\infty-norm…

Recently, Sidford, Wang, Wu and Ye (2018) developed an algorithm combining variance reduction techniques with value iteration to solve discounted Markov decision processes. This algorithm has a sublinear complexity when the discount factor…

Reinforcement learning is a growing field in AI with a lot of potential. Intelligent behavior is learned automatically through trial and error in interaction with the environment. However, this learning process is often costly. Using…

Model-free reinforcement learning is known to be memory and computation efficient and more amendable to large scale problems. In this paper, two model-free algorithms are introduced for learning infinite-horizon average-reward Markov…

We consider a regularized expected reward optimization problem in the non-oblivious setting that covers many existing problems in reinforcement learning (RL). In order to solve such an optimization problem, we apply and analyze the…

In this study, we derive Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bounds on the asymptotic sample-complexity for RL within the infinite-horizon Markov Decision Process (MDP) setting that are sharper than those in existing literature. The…

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…

We propose policy gradient algorithms which learn risk-sensitive policies in a reinforcement learning (RL) framework. Our proposed algorithms maximize the distortion risk measure (DRM) of the cumulative reward in an episodic Markov decision…

We study the $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-PAC policy identification problem in finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes. Existing approaches provide finite-time guarantees for approximate settings ($\varepsilon>0$) but suffer from high…

In this paper, we propose a stochastic search algorithm for solving general optimization problems with little structure. The algorithm iteratively finds high quality solutions by randomly sampling candidate solutions from a parameterized…

We propose an algorithm for deterministic continuous Markov Decision Processes with sparse rewards that computes the optimal policy exactly with no dependency on the size of the state space. The algorithm has time complexity of $O( |R|^3…

In this paper, we propose AsyncQVI, an asynchronous-parallel Q-value iteration for discounted Markov decision processes whose transition and reward can only be sampled through a generative model. Given such a problem with $|\mathcal{S}|$…

This paper is concerned with the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning, assuming access to a generative model (or simulator). We first consider $\gamma$-discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with state space…

In this paper, we propose World Model Policy Gradient (WMPG), an approach to reduce the variance of policy gradient estimates using learned world models (WM's). In WMPG, a WM is trained online and used to imagine trajectories. The imagined…

Sample-efficient exploration is crucial not only for discovering rewarding experiences but also for adapting to environment changes in a task-agnostic fashion. A principled treatment of the problem of optimal input synthesis for system…

We study regret minimization for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under cost constraints. We start by designing a policy optimization algorithm with carefully designed action-value estimator and bonus term,…