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Model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular learning paradigm due to its potential sample efficiency compared to model-free RL. However, existing empirical model-based RL approaches lack the ability to explore. This work studies a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Yuda Song , Wen Sun

We study online preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) with the goal of improving sample efficiency. While a growing body of theoretical work has emerged-motivated by PbRL's recent empirical success, particularly in aligning large…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Joongkyu Lee , Seouh-won Yi , Min-hwan Oh

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

Training reinforcement learning (RL) agents using scalar reward signals is often infeasible when an environment has sparse and non-Markovian rewards. Moreover, handcrafting these reward functions before training is prone to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Alessandro Abate , Yousif Almulla , James Fox , David Hyland , Michael Wooldridge

Reinforcement learning (RL) approaches based on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are predominantly applied in the robot joint space, often relying on limited task-specific information and partial awareness of the 3D environment. In…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Bingkun Huang , Yuhe Gong , Zewen Yang , Tianyu Ren , Luis Figueredo

We study task selection to enhance sample efficiency in model-agnostic meta-reinforcement learning (MAML-RL). Traditional meta-RL typically assumes that all available tasks are equally important, which can lead to task redundancy when they…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Donglin Zhan , Leonardo F. Toso , James Anderson

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has gained substantial attention across diverse application domains and theoretical investigations. Existing literature on RL theory largely focuses on risk-neutral settings where the decision-maker learns to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Zhengqi Wu , Renyuan Xu

High sample complexity remains a barrier to the application of reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in multi-agent systems. A large body of work has demonstrated that exploration mechanisms based on the principle of optimism under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-02 Robert Loftin , Aadirupa Saha , Sam Devlin , Katja Hofmann

Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Rene Carmona , Mathieu Lauriere

This paper investigates model robustness in reinforcement learning (RL) to reduce the sim-to-real gap in practice. We adopt the framework of distributionally robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), aimed at learning a policy that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Laixi Shi , Gen Li , Yuting Wei , Yuxin Chen , Matthieu Geist , Yuejie Chi

We consider the optimal sample complexity theory of tabular reinforcement learning (RL) for maximizing the infinite horizon discounted reward in a Markov decision process (MDP). Optimal worst-case complexity results have been developed for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-03 Shengbo Wang , Jose Blanchet , Peter Glynn

Reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with large state spaces is a challenging problem. The performance of standard RL algorithms degrades drastically with the dimensionality of state space. However, in practice,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-06-21 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-17 Jingwen Gu , Yiting He , Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

One of the fundamental challenges associated with reinforcement learning (RL) is that collecting sufficient data can be both time-consuming and expensive. In this paper, we formalize a concept of time reversal symmetry in a Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-29 Brett Barkley , Amy Zhang , David Fridovich-Keil

Multi-task learning (MTL) aims to improve estimation and prediction performance by sharing common information among related tasks. One natural assumption in MTL is that tasks are classified into clusters based on their characteristics.…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-28 Akira Okazaki , Shuichi Kawano

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Tien Mai , Patrick Jaillet

In offline reinforcement learning (RL), the absence of active exploration calls for attention on the model robustness to tackle the sim-to-real gap, where the discrepancy between the simulated and deployed environments can significantly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-28 He Wang , Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a crucial method for training or fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), enabling adaptive, task-specific optimizations through interactive feedback. Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Junwei Su , Chuan Wu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is empirically successful in complex nonlinear Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous state spaces. By contrast, the majority of theoretical RL literature requires the MDP to satisfy some form of linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-16 Dhruv Malik , Aldo Pacchiano , Vishwak Srinivasan , Yuanzhi Li

We study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for episodic Markov decision processes (MDP) whose transition probability is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of state and action. Despite much recent progress in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-19 Taehyun Hwang , Min-hwan Oh