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In probably approximately correct (PAC) reinforcement learning (RL), an agent is required to identify an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with probability $1-\delta$. While minimax optimal algorithms exist for this problem, its instance-dependent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Aymen Al-Marjani , Emilie Kaufmann

This paper introduces a quantum framework for addressing reinforcement learning (RL) tasks, grounded in the quantum principles and leveraging a fully quantum model of the classical Markov decision process (MDP). By employing quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-23 Thet Htar Su , Shaswot Shresthamali , Masaaki Kondo

Deploying reinforcement learning policies in the real world requires adapting to time-varying environments. We study this problem in the contextual Markov Decision Process (cMDP) framework, where a family of environments is indexed by a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Param Budhraja , Aditya Gangrade , Alex Olshevsky , Venkatesh Saligrama

We propose a novel framework for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RSRL) that incorporates robustness against transition uncertainty. We define two distinct yet coupled risk measures: an inner risk measure addressing state and cost…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-01-01 Shanyu Han , Yangbo He , Yang Liu

We describe a new approach for managing aleatoric uncertainty in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm. Instead of selecting actions according to a single statistic, we propose a distributional method based on the second-order stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 John D. Martin , Michal Lyskawinski , Xiaohu Li , Brendan Englot

We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-14 Jeremy McMahan , Xiaojin Zhu

A novel reinforcement learning scheme to synthesize policies for continuous-space Markov decision processes (MDPs) is proposed. This scheme enables one to apply model-free, off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithms for finite MDPs to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-03-03 Abolfazl Lavaei , Fabio Somenzi , Sadegh Soudjani , Ashutosh Trivedi , Majid Zamani

We propose a novel distributionally robust $Q$-learning algorithm for the non-tabular case accounting for continuous state spaces where the state transition of the underlying Markov decision process is subject to model uncertainty. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Chung I Lu , Julian Sester , Aijia Zhang

Constrained discrete optimization problems are encountered in many areas of communication and machine learning. We consider the case where the objective function satisfies Bellman's optimality principle without the constraints on which we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-14 I. Zakir Ahmed , Hamid Sadjadpour , Shahram Yousefi

Analyzing the spectral properties of the Koopman operator is crucial for understanding and predicting the behavior of complex stochastic dynamical systems. However, the accuracy of data-driven estimation methods, such as Extended Dynamic…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Yuanchao Xu , Jing Liu , Zhongwei Shen , Isao Ishikawa

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) has received increasing attention for learning policies from previously collected data without interaction with the real environment, which is particularly important in high-stakes applications. While a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Qing Zhu , Xian Yu

This article proposes an improved trajectory optimization approach for stochastic optimal control of dynamical systems affected by measurement noise by combining optimal control with maximum likelihood techniques to improve the reduction of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-25 Prakash Mallick , Zhiyong Chen

This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-18 Fei Wu , Erik Demeulemeester , Jannik Matuschke

The principle of optimism in the face of uncertainty is prevalent throughout sequential decision making problems such as multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning (RL). To be successful, an optimistic RL algorithm must over-estimate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-07 Aldo Pacchiano , Philip J. Ball , Jack Parker-Holder , Krzysztof Choromanski , Stephen Roberts

Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) focuses on designing policies that achieve good performance under model uncertainties. The goal is to maximize the worst-case long-term discounted reward, where the data for RL comes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Saptarshi Mandal , Yashaswini Murthy , R. Srikant

We study offline reinforcement learning (RL) with linear MDPs under the infinite-horizon discounted setting which aims to learn a policy that maximizes the expected discounted cumulative reward using a pre-collected dataset. Existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-04 Kihyuk Hong , Ambuj Tewari

In this paper, we present a discretization algorithm for finite horizon risk constrained dynamic programming algorithm in [Chow_Pavone_13]. Although in a theoretical standpoint, Bellman's recursion provides a systematic way to find optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-01-12 Yin-Lam Chow , Marco Pavone

This paper concerns the central issues of model robustness and sample efficiency in offline reinforcement learning (RL), which aims to learn to perform decision making from history data without active exploration. Due to uncertainties and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

Distributional reinforcement learning algorithms have attempted to utilize estimated uncertainty for exploration, such as optimism in the face of uncertainty. However, using the estimated variance for optimistic exploration may cause biased…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-06 Taehyun Cho , Seungyub Han , Heesoo Lee , Kyungjae Lee , Jungwoo Lee

Learning a near optimal policy in a partially observable system remains an elusive challenge in contemporary reinforcement learning. In this work, we consider episodic reinforcement learning in a reward-mixing Markov decision process (MDP).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-01 Jeongyeol Kwon , Yonathan Efroni , Constantine Caramanis , Shie Mannor