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We study offline reinforcement learning in average-reward MDPs, which presents increased challenges from the perspectives of distribution shift and non-uniform coverage, and has been relatively underexamined from a theoretical perspective.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Matthew Zurek , Guy Zamir , Yudong Chen

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns

Non-stationary environments are challenging for reinforcement learning algorithms. If the state transition and/or reward functions change based on latent factors, the agent is effectively tasked with optimizing a behavior that maximizes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Bruno C. da Silva

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a popular class of models suitable for solving control decision problems in probabilistic reactive systems. We consider parametric MDPs (pMDPs) that include parameters in some of the transition…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-06-14 Sebastian Arming , Ezio Bartocci , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ana Sokolova

We study a primal-dual (PD) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for online constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). Despite its widespread practical use, the existing theoretical literature on PD-RL algorithms for this problem only…

Reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) considers the setting where the agent does not have access to a reward function during exploration, but must propose a near-optimal policy for an arbitrary reward function revealed only after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Andrew Wagenmaker , Yifang Chen , Max Simchowitz , Simon S. Du , Kevin Jamieson

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in finite discounted MDPs, where a generative model of the MDP is assumed to be available. We consider a family or risk measures called the optimized certainty equivalent (OCE), which includes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Oliver Mortensen , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

This paper presents a systematic study on gap-dependent sample complexity in offline reinforcement learning. Prior work showed when the density ratio between an optimal policy and the behavior policy is upper bounded (the optimal policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-05 Xinqi Wang , Qiwen Cui , Simon S. Du

We study the statistical limits of Imitation Learning (IL) in episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a state space $\mathcal{S}$. We focus on the known-transition setting where the learner is provided a dataset of $N$ length-$H$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Nived Rajaraman , Yanjun Han , Lin F. Yang , Kannan Ramchandran , Jiantao Jiao

We study the optimal sample complexity in large-scale Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems with policy space generalization, i.e. the agent has a prior knowledge that the optimal policy lies in a known policy space. Existing results show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-18 Wenlong Mou , Zheng Wen , Xi Chen

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

We study the sample complexity of model-based reinforcement learning (henceforth RL) in general contextual decision processes that require strategic exploration to find a near-optimal policy. We design new algorithms for RL with a generic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-31 Wen Sun , Nan Jiang , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Alekh Agarwal , John Langford

The proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm stands as one of the most prosperous methods in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). Despite its success, the theoretical understanding of PPO remains deficient. Specifically, it is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-09 Han Zhong , Tong Zhang

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) in which the transition probabilities and rewards belong to an uncertainty set parametrized by a collection of random variables. The probability distributions for these random parameters are…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu

Recent theoretical work studies sample-efficient reinforcement learning (RL) extensively in two settings: learning interactively in the environment (online RL), or learning from an offline dataset (offline RL). However, existing algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-14 Tengyang Xie , Nan Jiang , Huan Wang , Caiming Xiong , Yu Bai

The best algorithm for a computational problem generally depends on the "relevant inputs," a concept that depends on the application domain and often defies formal articulation. While there is a large literature on empirical approaches to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-09-06 Rishi Gupta , Tim Roughgarden

We consider parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs) that are augmented with unknown probability distributions over parameter values. The problem is to compute the probability to satisfy a temporal logic specification with any concrete…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Thom Badings , Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu

The deployment of autonomous systems in safety-critical environments requires control policies that guarantee satisfaction of complex control specifications. These systems are commonly modeled as nonlinear discrete-time stochastic systems.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Alessandro Riccardi , Thom Badings , Luca Laurenti , Alessandro Abate , Bart De Schutter

Designing a safe policy for uncertain environments is crucial in real-world control systems. However, this challenge remains inadequately addressed within the Markov decision process (MDP) framework. This paper presents the first algorithm…

We propose MDP-GapE, a new trajectory-based Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm for planning in a Markov Decision Process in which transitions have a finite support. We prove an upper bound on the number of calls to the generative models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Anders Jonsson , Emilie Kaufmann , Pierre Ménard , Omar Darwiche Domingues , Edouard Leurent , Michal Valko