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Related papers: A Pontryagin Perspective on Reinforcement Learning

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Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is inherently a reactive method, operating under the assumption that it starts with no prior knowledge of the system and entirely depends on trial-and-error for learning. This approach faces several…

We consider reinforcement learning in input-driven environments, where an exogenous, stochastic input process affects the dynamics of the system. Input processes arise in many applications, including queuing systems, robotics control with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-28 Hongzi Mao , Shaileshh Bojja Venkatakrishnan , Malte Schwarzkopf , Mohammad Alizadeh

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a general framework for adaptive control, which has proven to be efficient in many domains, e.g., board games, video games or autonomous vehicles. In such problems, an agent faces a sequential decision-making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Olivier Buffet , Olivier Pietquin , Paul Weng

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a control approach that can handle nonlinear stochastic optimal control problems. However, despite the promise exhibited, RL has yet to see marked translation to industrial practice primarily due to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-15 Elton Pan , Panagiotis Petsagkourakis , Max Mowbray , Dongda Zhang , Antonio del Rio-Chanona

Safety is a critical feature of controller design for physical systems. When designing control policies, several approaches to guarantee this aspect of autonomy have been proposed, such as robust controllers or control barrier functions.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Santiago Paternain

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-03-24 Arthur Charpentier , Romuald Elie , Carl Remlinger

The Bellman equation and its continuous form, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, are ubiquitous in reinforcement learning and control theory. However, these equations become intractable for high-dimensional or nonlinear systems. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Preston Rozwood , Edward Mehrez , Ludger Paehler , Wen Sun , Steven L. Brunton

Deep Reinforcement Learning has enabled the control of increasingly complex and high-dimensional problems. However, the need of vast amounts of data before reasonable performance is attained prevents its widespread application. We employ…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-08 Jan Scholten , Daan Wout , Carlos Celemin , Jens Kober

Reinforcement learning is one of the core components in designing an artificial intelligent system emphasizing real-time response. Reinforcement learning influences the system to take actions within an arbitrary environment either having…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-02-03 Amit Kumar Mondal

The subject of this paper is reinforcement learning. Policies are considered here that produce actions based on states and random elements autocorrelated in subsequent time instants. Consequently, an agent learns from experiments that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-11 Marcin Szulc , Jakub Łyskawa , Paweł Wawrzyński

Autonomous vehicles with a self-evolving ability are expected to cope with unknown scenarios in the real-world environment. Take advantage of trial and error mechanism, reinforcement learning is able to self evolve by learning the optimal…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-08-23 Shuo Yang , Liwen Wang , Yanjun Huang , Hong Chen

A common belief in model-free reinforcement learning is that methods based on random search in the parameter space of policies exhibit significantly worse sample complexity than those that explore the space of actions. We dispel such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-20 Horia Mania , Aurelia Guy , Benjamin Recht

Quadratic programming is a workhorse of modern nonlinear optimization, control, and data science. Although regularized methods offer convergence guarantees under minimal assumptions on the problem data, they can exhibit the slow…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-18 Jeremy Bertoncini , Alberto De Marchi , Matthias Gerdts , Simon Gottschalk

This paper presents a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm to solve the risk-averse optimal control (RAOC) problem for discrete-time nonlinear systems. While successful RL algorithms have been presented to learn optimal control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-29 Yuzhen Han , Majid Mazouchi , Subramanya Nageshrao , Hamidreza Modares

Most value-based and actor--critic reinforcement learning methods rely on Bellman-style recursions, yet these recursions collapse under non-exponential discounting common in human preferences and survival processes. We show the breakdown is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Hojin Ko , Jeonggyu Huh

Recently, safe reinforcement learning (RL) with the actor-critic structure for continuous control tasks has received increasing attention. It is still challenging to learn a near-optimal control policy with safety and convergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Xinglong Zhang , Yaoqian Peng , Biao Luo , Wei Pan , Xin Xu , Haibin Xie

This paper applies a reinforcement learning (RL) method to solve infinite horizon continuous-time stochastic linear quadratic problems, where drift and diffusion terms in the dynamics may depend on both the state and control. Based on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-17 Na Li , Xun Li , Jing Peng , Zuo Quan Xu

We investigate robust model-free reinforcement learning algorithms designed for environments that may be dynamic or even adversarial. Traditional state-based policies often struggle to accommodate the challenges imposed by the presence of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Udaya Ghai , Arushi Gupta , Wenhan Xia , Karan Singh , Elad Hazan

Deep reinforcement learning enables algorithms to learn complex behavior, deal with continuous action spaces and find good strategies in environments with high dimensional state spaces. With deep reinforcement learning being an active area…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-17 Winfried Lötzsch

While reinforcement learning (RL) holds great potential for decision making in the real world, it suffers from a number of unique difficulties which often need specific consideration. In particular: it is highly non-stationary; suffers from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Alexander David Goldie , Chris Lu , Matthew Thomas Jackson , Shimon Whiteson , Jakob Nicolaus Foerster