Related papers: Non-Asymptotic Analysis for Single-Loop (Natural) …
As an important type of reinforcement learning algorithms, actor-critic (AC) and natural actor-critic (NAC) algorithms are often executed in two ways for finding optimal policies. In the first nested-loop design, actor's one update of…
The actor-critic (AC) algorithm is a popular method to find an optimal policy in reinforcement learning. In the infinite horizon scenario, the finite-sample convergence rate for the AC and natural actor-critic (NAC) algorithms has been…
We analyze the global convergence of the single-timescale actor-critic (AC) algorithm for the infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with finite state spaces. To this end, we introduce an elegant analytical framework…
Recent studies have increasingly focused on non-asymptotic convergence analyses for actor-critic (AC) algorithms. One such effort introduced a two-timescale critic-actor algorithm for the discounted cost setting using a tabular…
Actor-critic (AC) methods have exhibited great empirical success compared with other reinforcement learning algorithms, where the actor uses the policy gradient to improve the learning policy and the critic uses temporal difference learning…
Decentralized Actor-Critic (AC) algorithms have been widely utilized for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) and have achieved remarkable success. Apart from its empirical success, the theoretical convergence property of decentralized…
Several recent works have focused on carrying out non-asymptotic convergence analyses for AC algorithms. Recently, a two-timescale critic-actor algorithm has been presented for the discounted cost setting in the look-up table case where the…
The current state-of-the-art theoretical analysis of Actor-Critic (AC) algorithms significantly lags in addressing the practical aspects of AC implementations. This crucial gap needs bridging to bring the analysis in line with practical…
Actor-critic (AC) methods are widely used in reinforcement learning (RL) and benefit from the flexibility of using any policy gradient method as the actor and value-based method as the critic. The critic is usually trained by minimizing the…
Actor Critic methods have found immense applications on a wide range of Reinforcement Learning tasks especially when the state-action space is large. In this paper, we consider actor critic and natural actor critic algorithms with function…
Actor-Critic based approaches were among the first to address reinforcement learning in a general setting. Recently, these algorithms have gained renewed interest due to their generality, good convergence properties, and possible biological…
We establish an optimal sample complexity of $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ for obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal global policy using a single-timescale actor-critic (AC) algorithm in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) with…
Deep Actor-Critic algorithms, which combine Actor-Critic with deep neural network (DNN), have been among the most prevalent reinforcement learning algorithms for decision-making problems in simulated environments. However, the existing deep…
Actor-critic methods have achieved significant success in many challenging applications. However, its finite-time convergence is still poorly understood in the most practical single-timescale form. Existing works on analyzing…
In this paper, we develop a novel variant of off-policy natural actor-critic algorithm with linear function approximation and we establish a sample complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-3})$, outperforming all the previously known…
Actor-critic algorithms have become a cornerstone in reinforcement learning (RL), leveraging the strengths of both policy-based and value-based methods. Despite recent progress in understanding their statistical efficiency, no existing work…
In this paper, we establish last-iterate convergence rates for off-policy actor--critic methods in reinforcement learning. In particular, under a single-loop, single-timescale implementation and a broad class of policy updates, including…
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,…
Reinforcement learning, mathematically described by Markov Decision Problems, may be approached either through dynamic programming or policy search. Actor-critic algorithms combine the merits of both approaches by alternating between steps…
Actor-critic (AC) algorithms have been widely adopted in decentralized multi-agent systems to learn the optimal joint control policy. However, existing decentralized AC algorithms either do not preserve the privacy of agents or are not…