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We study the regret guarantee for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RSRL) via distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) methods. In particular, we consider finite episodic Markov decision processes whose objective is the entropic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Hao Liang , Zhi-Quan Luo

While Distributional Reinforcement Learning (DRL) methods have demonstrated strong performance in online settings, its success in offline scenarios remains limited. We hypothesize that a key limitation of existing offline DRL methods lies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Ryo Iwaki , Takayuki Osogami

In distributional reinforcement learning (RL), the estimated distribution of value function models both the parametric and intrinsic uncertainties. We propose a novel and efficient exploration method for deep RL that has two components. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-16 Borislav Mavrin , Shangtong Zhang , Hengshuai Yao , Linglong Kong , Kaiwen Wu , Yaoliang Yu

While deep reinforcement learning has achieved tremendous successes in various applications, most existing works only focus on maximizing the expected value of total return and thus ignore its inherent stochasticity. Such stochasticity is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-19 Han Zhong , Xun Deng , Ethan X. Fang , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Runze Li

Machine learning algorithms with empirical risk minimization are vulnerable under distributional shifts due to the greedy adoption of all the correlations found in training data. Recently, there are robust learning methods aiming at this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-12 Jiashuo Liu , Zheyan Shen , Peng Cui , Linjun Zhou , Kun Kuang , Bo Li , Yishi Lin

This paper addresses a new interpretation of the traditional optimization method in reinforcement learning (RL) as optimization problems using reverse Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, and derives a new optimization method using forward KL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-25 Taisuke Kobayashi

We propose a new algorithm for model-based distributional reinforcement learning (RL), and prove that it is minimax-optimal for approximating return distributions with a generative model (up to logarithmic factors), resolving an open…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Mark Rowland , Li Kevin Wenliang , Rémi Munos , Clare Lyle , Yunhao Tang , Will Dabney

Modern navigation algorithms based on deep reinforcement learning (RL) show promising efficiency and robustness. However, most deep RL algorithms operate in a risk-neutral manner, making no special attempt to shield users from relatively…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-12 Jinyoung Choi , Christopher R. Dance , Jung-eun Kim , Seulbin Hwang , Kyung-sik Park

Offline reinforcement learning aims to learn an agent from pre-collected datasets, avoiding unsafe and inefficient real-time interaction. However, inevitable access to out-ofdistribution actions during the learning process introduces…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-06 Fan Zhang , Baoru Huang , Xin Zhang

We propose a novel distributionally robust $Q$-learning algorithm for the non-tabular case accounting for continuous state spaces where the state transition of the underlying Markov decision process is subject to model uncertainty. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Chung I Lu , Julian Sester , Aijia Zhang

Batch reinforcement learning (RL) is important to apply RL algorithms to many high stakes tasks. Doing batch RL in a way that yields a reliable new policy in large domains is challenging: a new decision policy may visit states and actions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-23 Yao Liu , Adith Swaminathan , Alekh Agarwal , Emma Brunskill

Impressive results in natural language processing (NLP) based on the Transformer neural network architecture have inspired researchers to explore viewing offline reinforcement learning (RL) as a generic sequence modeling problem. Recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-22 Adam Villaflor , Zhe Huang , Swapnil Pande , John Dolan , Jeff Schneider

The reward signal plays a central role in defining the desired behaviors of agents in reinforcement learning (RL). Rewards collected from realistic environments could be perturbed, corrupted, or noisy due to an adversary, sensor error, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Xi Chen , Zhihui Zhu , Andrew Perrault

Robust Reinforcement Learning tries to make predictions more robust to changes in the dynamics or rewards of the system. This problem is particularly important when the dynamics and rewards of the environment are estimated from the data. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-15 Pierre Clavier , Stéphanie Allassonière , Erwan Le Pennec

Researchers and practitioners are increasingly considering reinforcement learning to optimize decisions in complex domains like robotics and healthcare. To date, these efforts have largely utilized expectation-based learning. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Zequn Chen , Wesley J. Marrero

Exploration remains a key challenge in deep reinforcement learning (RL). Optimism in the face of uncertainty is a well-known heuristic with theoretical guarantees in the tabular setting, but how best to translate the principle to deep…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Brendan O'Donoghue

The primary goal of reinforcement learning is to develop decision-making policies that prioritize optimal performance, frequently without considering safety. In contrast, safe reinforcement learning seeks to reduce or avoid unsafe behavior.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Zahra Shahrooei , Ali Baheri

This paper studies the optimal dividend problem with a bounded payout rate in a partially observed regime-switching diffusion model, where, in practice, the market regime is unobserved and key model parameters are unknown. To address this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-29 Zhongqin Gao , Yan Lv , Jingmin He

Classical reinforcement learning (RL) techniques are generally concerned with the design of decision-making policies driven by the maximisation of the expected outcome. Nevertheless, this approach does not take into consideration the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-02 Thibaut Théate , Damien Ernst

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn an optimal policy from pre-collected data. However, it faces challenges of distributional shift, where the learned policy may encounter unseen scenarios not covered in the offline data.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Jin Zhu , Xin Zhou , Jiaang Yao , Gholamali Aminian , Omar Rivasplata , Simon Little , Lexin Li , Chengchun Shi