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Many sequential decision-making problems need optimization of different objectives which possibly conflict with each other. The conventional way to deal with a multi-task problem is to establish a scalar objective function based on a linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-28 Mohsen Amidzadeh

In reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to perform a task by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback (a numerical reward) for its actions. However, the assumption that rewards are always observable is often not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Simone Parisi , Montaser Mohammedalamen , Alireza Kazemipour , Matthew E. Taylor , Michael Bowling

Exploration in multi-agent reinforcement learning is a challenging problem, especially in environments with sparse rewards. We propose a general method for efficient exploration by sharing experience amongst agents. Our proposed algorithm,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-05-20 Filippos Christianos , Lukas Schäfer , Stefano V. Albrecht

In this paper, we devise a distributional framework on actor-critic as a solution to distributional instability, action type restriction, and conflation between samples and statistics. We propose a new method that minimizes the Cram\'er…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Daniel Wontae Nam , Younghoon Kim , Chan Y. Park

Reinforcement learning (RL) relies heavily on exploration to learn from its environment and maximize observed rewards. Therefore, it is essential to design a reward function that guarantees optimal learning from the received experience.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Ingy ElSayed-Aly , Lu Feng

Executing actions in a correlated manner is a common strategy for human coordination that often leads to better cooperation, which is also potentially beneficial for cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, the recent…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Dingyang Chen , Qi Zhang

Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning. Yet, the nonconvexity of policy optimization poses significant challenges in understanding the global convergence of policy gradient methods. For a class of finite-horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-10 Xin Chen , Yifan Hu , Minda Zhao

Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) aims to maximize the expected total reward, while the risk of uncertain outcomes needs to be controlled to ensure reliable performance in a risk-averse setting. In this paper, we consider the problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-18 Xian Yu , Siqian Shen

Generative adversarial imitation learning (GAIL) is a popular inverse reinforcement learning approach for jointly optimizing policy and reward from expert trajectories. A primary question about GAIL is whether applying a certain policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-26 Ziwei Guan , Tengyu Xu , Yingbin Liang

The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Yash Chandak , Georgios Theocharous , Blossom Metevier , Philip S. Thomas

We study learning in periodic Markov Decision Process(MDP), a special type of non-stationary MDP where both the state transition probabilities and reward functions vary periodically, under the average reward maximization setting. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Ayush Aniket , Arpan Chattopadhyay

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Mohsen Amiri , Sindri Magnússon

In this paper, we present an online reinforcement learning algorithm, called Renewal Monte Carlo (RMC), for infinite horizon Markov decision processes with a designated start state. RMC is a Monte Carlo algorithm and retains the advantages…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-05 Jayakumar Subramanian , Aditya Mahajan

We introduce learning and planning algorithms for average-reward MDPs, including 1) the first general proven-convergent off-policy model-free control algorithm without reference states, 2) the first proven-convergent off-policy model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Yi Wan , Abhishek Naik , Richard S. Sutton

In many robotic applications, some aspects of the system dynamics can be modeled accurately while others are difficult to obtain or model. We present a novel reinforcement learning (RL) method for continuous state and action spaces that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-06 Tomoki Nishi , Prashant Doshi , Michael R. James , Danil Prokhorov

Developing an agent capable of adapting to unseen environments remains a difficult challenge in imitation learning. This work presents Adaptive Return-conditioned Policy (ARP), an efficient framework designed to enhance the agent's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-26 Changyeon Kim , Younggyo Seo , Hao Liu , Lisa Lee , Jinwoo Shin , Honglak Lee , Kimin Lee

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

A tenet of reinforcement learning is that the agent always observes rewards. However, this is not true in many realistic settings, e.g., a human observer may not always be available to provide rewards, sensors may be limited or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Alireza Kazemipour , Simone Parisi , Matthew E. Taylor , Michael Bowling

Progress in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) requires challenging benchmarks that assess the limits of current methods. However, existing benchmarks often target narrow short-horizon challenges that do not adequately stress the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Bassel Al Omari , Michael Matthews , Alexander Rutherford , Jakob Nicolaus Foerster

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) provides a framework for problems involving multiple interacting agents. Despite apparent similarity to the single-agent case, multi-agent problems are often harder to train and analyze…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-04 Michał Zawalski , Błażej Osiński , Henryk Michalewski , Piotr Miłoś