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We prove the stability and global convergence of a coupled actor-critic gradient flow for infinite-horizon and entropy-regularised Markov decision processes (MDPs) in continuous state and action space with linear function approximation…
We consider the reinforcement learning problem for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with large or even countably infinite state spaces, where the controller has access to only noisy observations of the underlying…
Risk-aware Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms like SAC and TD3 were shown empirically to outperform their risk-neutral counterparts in a variety of continuous-action tasks. However, the theoretical basis for the pessimistic objectives…
Actor-critic (AC) algorithms, empowered by neural networks, have had significant empirical success in recent years. However, most of the existing theoretical support for AC algorithms focuses on the case of linear function approximations,…
The exploitation of extra state information has been an active research area in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). QMIX represents the joint action-value using a non-negative function approximator and achieves the best performance,…
In this note, we study distributed time-varying optimization for a multi-agent system. We first focus on a class of time-varying quadratic cost functions, and develop a new distributed algorithm that integrates an average estimator and an…
Actor-critic methods for decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) facilitate collaborative optimal decision making without centralized coordination, thus enabling a wide range of applications in practice. To date, however,…
We present for the first time an asymptotic convergence analysis of two time-scale stochastic approximation driven by `controlled' Markov noise. In particular, both the faster and slower recursions have non-additive controlled Markov noise…
In this work, we approach the minimization of a continuously differentiable convex function under linear equality constraints by a second-order dynamical system with an asymptotically vanishing damping term. The system under consideration…
Policy gradient algorithms have proven to be successful in diverse decision making and control tasks. However, these methods suffer from high sample complexity and instability issues. In this paper, we address these challenges by providing…
Many policy-based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can be viewed as instantiations of approximate policy iteration (PI), i.e., where policy improvement and policy evaluation are both performed approximately. In applications where the…
The hierarchical interaction between the actor and critic in actor-critic based reinforcement learning algorithms naturally lends itself to a game-theoretic interpretation. We adopt this viewpoint and model the actor and critic interaction…
We focus on a simulation-based optimization problem of choosing the best design from the feasible space. Although the simulation model can be queried with finite samples, its internal processing rule cannot be utilized in the optimization…
In this work, we consider policy-based methods for solving the reinforcement learning problem, and establish the sample complexity guarantees. A policy-based algorithm typically consists of an actor and a critic. We consider using various…
We study the problem of off-policy critic evaluation in several variants of value-based off-policy actor-critic algorithms. Off-policy actor-critic algorithms require an off-policy critic evaluation step, to estimate the value of the new…
A key open challenge in agile quadrotor flight is how to combine the flexibility and task-level generality of model-free reinforcement learning (RL) with the structure and online replanning capabilities of model predictive control (MPC),…
As an important algorithm in deep reinforcement learning, advantage actor critic (A2C) has been widely succeeded in both discrete and continuous control tasks with raw pixel inputs, but its sample efficiency still needs to improve more. In…
Reinforcement learning algorithms are typically geared towards optimizing the expected return of an agent. However, in many practical applications, low variance in the return is desired to ensure the reliability of an algorithm. In this…
We consider an improper reinforcement learning setting where a learner is given $M$ base controllers for an unknown Markov decision process, and wishes to combine them optimally to produce a potentially new controller that can outperform…
Actor-critic methods have achieved state-of-the-art performance in various challenging tasks. However, theoretical understandings of their performance remain elusive and challenging. Existing studies mostly focus on practically uncommon…