Related papers: Non-Asymptotic Analysis for Single-Loop (Natural) …
We study the global convergence and global optimality of actor-critic, one of the most popular families of reinforcement learning algorithms. While most existing works on actor-critic employ bi-level or two-timescale updates, we focus on…
Asynchronous and parallel implementation of standard reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms is a key enabler of the tremendous success of modern RL. Among many asynchronous RL algorithms, arguably the most popular and effective one is the…
Actor-critic (AC) algorithms are known for their efficacy and high performance in solving reinforcement learning problems, but they also suffer from low sampling efficiency. An AC based policy optimization process is iterative and needs to…
The actor-critic (AC) reinforcement learning algorithms have been the powerhouse behind many challenging applications. Nevertheless, its convergence is fragile in general. To study its instability, existing works mostly consider the…
This work examines average-reward reinforcement learning with general policy parametrization. Existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) guarantees for this problem are either suboptimal or hindered by several challenges, including poor scalability…
In this paper, we provide finite-sample convergence guarantees for an off-policy variant of the natural actor-critic (NAC) algorithm based on Importance Sampling. In particular, we show that the algorithm converges to a global optimal…
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…
The actor-critic (AC) framework has achieved strong empirical success in off-policy reinforcement learning but suffers from the "moving target" problem, where the evaluated policy changes continually. Functional critics, or…
Designing off-policy reinforcement learning algorithms is typically a very challenging task, because a desirable iteration update often involves an expectation over an on-policy distribution. Prior off-policy actor-critic (AC) algorithms…
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…
This paper presents the Relaxed Continuous-Time Actor-critic (RCTAC) algorithm, a method for finding the nearly optimal policy for nonlinear continuous-time (CT) systems with known dynamics and infinite horizon, such as the path-tracking…
Natural actor-critic (NAC) and its variants, equipped with the representation power of neural networks, have demonstrated impressive empirical success in solving Markov decision problems with large state spaces. In this paper, we present a…
Actor-critic algorithms address the dual goals of reinforcement learning (RL), policy evaluation and improvement via two separate function approximators. The practicality of this approach comes at the expense of training instability, caused…
Federated reinforcement learning (FRL) has emerged as a promising paradigm, enabling multiple agents to collaborate and learn a shared policy adaptable across heterogeneous environments. Among the various reinforcement learning (RL)…
\Ac{MPC} and \ac{RL} are two powerful control strategies with, arguably, complementary advantages. In this work, we show how actor-critic \ac{RL} techniques can be leveraged to improve the performance of \ac{MPC}. The \ac{RL} critic is used…
In this paper, we study the problem of reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems where communication among agents is limited. We develop a decentralized actor-critic learning framework in which each agent performs several local updates…
We present the first class of policy-gradient algorithms that work with both state-value and policy function-approximation, and are guaranteed to converge under off-policy training. Our solution targets problems in reinforcement learning…
Many popular practical reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms employ evolving reward functions-through techniques such as reward shaping, entropy regularization, or curriculum learning-yet their theoretical foundations remain…
Despite the popularity of the actor-critic method and the practical needs of collaborative policy training, existing works typically either overlook environmental heterogeneity or give up personalization altogether by training a single…
Soft actor-critic (SAC) in reinforcement learning is expected to be one of the next-generation robot control schemes. Its ability to maximize policy entropy would make a robotic controller robust to noise and perturbation, which is useful…