English
Related papers

Related papers: Fractal Landscapes in Policy Optimization

200 papers

We study the problem of efficiently estimating policies that simultaneously optimize multiple objectives in reinforcement learning (RL). Given $n$ objectives (or tasks), we seek the optimal partition of these objectives into $k \ll n$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Zhenshuo Zhang , Minxuan Duan , Youran Ye , Hongyang R. Zhang

We revisit the finite time analysis of policy gradient methods in the one of the simplest settings: finite state and action MDPs with a policy class consisting of all stochastic policies and with exact gradient evaluations. There has been…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Jalaj Bhandari , Daniel Russo

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated its ability to solve high dimensional tasks by leveraging non-linear function approximators. However, these successes are mostly achieved by 'black-box' policies in simulated domains. When…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-19 Riad Akrour , Davide Tateo , Jan Peters

Safe reinforcement learning (Safe RL) aims to ensure policy performance while satisfying safety constraints. However, most existing Safe RL methods assume benign environments, making them vulnerable to adversarial perturbations commonly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Jialiang Fan , Shixiong Jiang , Mengyu Liu , Fanxin Kong

Reinforcement learning (RL) involves sequential decision making in uncertain environments. The aim of the decision-making agent is to maximize the benefit of acting in its environment over an extended period of time. Finding an optimal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Istvan Szita , Balint Takacs , Andras Lorincz

While reinforcement learning (RL) has been central to the recent success of large language models (LLMs), RL optimization is notoriously unstable, especially when compared to supervised fine-tuning (SFT). In this work, we investigate the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Hongzhan Chen , Tao Yang , Yuhua Zhu , Shiping Gao , Xiaojun Quan , Ting Yao

We develop a mathematical framework for solving multi-task reinforcement learning (MTRL) problems based on a type of policy gradient method. The goal in MTRL is to learn a common policy that operates effectively in different environments;…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-31 Sihan Zeng , Aqeel Anwar , Thinh Doan , Arijit Raychowdhury , Justin Romberg

Policy networks are a central feature of deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for continuous control, enabling the estimation and sampling of high-value actions. From the variational inference perspective on RL, policy networks, when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Joseph Marino , Alexandre Piché , Alessandro Davide Ialongo , Yisong Yue

The use of deep neural networks as function approximators has led to striking progress for reinforcement learning algorithms and applications. Yet the knowledge we have on decision boundary geometry and the loss landscape of neural policies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-17 Ezgi Korkmaz

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Nithia Vijayan , Prashanth L. A

Understanding the behavior of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents is crucial for improving their performance and reliability. However, the complexity of their policies often makes them challenging to understand. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Sindre Benjamin Remman , Anastasios M. Lekkas

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

We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Mengmeng Li , Daniel Kuhn , Tobias Sutter

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has achieved significant breakthroughs in various tasks. However, most DRL algorithms suffer a problem of generalizing the learned policy which makes the learning performance largely affected even by minor…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Zhengyao Jiang , Shan Luo

The framework of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) provides a powerful and widely applicable mathematical formalization for sequential decision-making. This paper present a novel DRL framework, termed \emph{$f$-Divergence Reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-15 Chen Gong , Qiang He , Yunpeng Bai , Zhou Yang , Xiaoyu Chen , Xinwen Hou , Xianjie Zhang , Yu Liu , Guoliang Fan

Interpretability of AI models allows for user safety checks to build trust in such AIs. In particular, Decision Trees (DTs) provide a global look at the learned model and transparently reveal which features of the input are critical for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-23 Hector Kohler , Riad Akrour , Philippe Preux

Researchers have demonstrated that Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is a powerful tool for finding policies that perform well on complex robotic systems. However, these policies are often unpredictable and can induce highly variable…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Sean Gillen , Asutay Ozmen , Katie Byl

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

In recent years, researchers have made significant progress in devising reinforcement-learning algorithms for optimizing linear temporal logic (LTL) objectives and LTL-like objectives. Despite these advancements, there are fundamental…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-06-28 Cambridge Yang , Michael Littman , Michael Carbin

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