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Variational quantum machine learning algorithms have become the focus of recent research on how to utilize near-term quantum devices for machine learning tasks. They are considered suitable for this as the circuits that are run can be…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-12-20 Andrea Skolik , Stefano Mangini , Thomas Bäck , Chiara Macchiavello , Vedran Dunjko

Incorporating high-level knowledge is an effective way to expedite reinforcement learning (RL), especially for complex tasks with sparse rewards. We investigate an RL problem where the high-level knowledge is in the form of reward machines,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Zhe Xu , Ivan Gavran , Yousef Ahmad , Rupak Majumdar , Daniel Neider , Ufuk Topcu , Bo Wu

We study reinforcement learning (RL) for a class of continuous-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control problems for diffusions, where states are scalar-valued and running control rewards are absent but volatilities of the state processes depend…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Yilie Huang , Yanwei Jia , Xun Yu Zhou

A novel reinforcement learning algorithm is introduced for multiarmed restless bandits with average reward, using the paradigms of Q-learning and Whittle index. Specifically, we leverage the structure of the Whittle index policy to reduce…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-22 Konstantin E. Avrachenkov , Vivek S. Borkar

The Zap Q-learning algorithm introduced in this paper is an improvement of Watkins' original algorithm and recent competitors in several respects. It is a matrix-gain algorithm designed so that its asymptotic variance is optimal. Moreover,…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-03-23 Adithya M. Devraj , Sean P. Meyn

Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Q-learning, perform poorly in the early stages of learning in noisy environments, because much effort is spent unlearning biased estimates of the state-action value function. The bias…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-01 Roy Fox , Ari Pakman , Naftali Tishby

We study computationally and statistically efficient Reinforcement Learning algorithms for the linear Bellman Complete setting. This setting uses linear function approximation to capture value functions and unifies existing models like…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Runzhe Wu , Ayush Sekhari , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Wen Sun

In this paper, we place deep Q-learning into a control-oriented perspective and study its learning dynamics with well-established techniques from robust control. We formulate an uncertain linear time-invariant model by means of the neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Balazs Varga , Balazs Kulcsar , Morteza Haghir Chehreghani

Reinforcement learning (RL) models have shown the capability of learning complex behaviors, but quantitatively assessing those behaviors - which is critical for safety assurance and the discovery of novel strategies - is challenging. By…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 William T. Redman

Robustness to noise is of utmost importance in reinforcement learning systems, particularly in military contexts where high stakes and uncertain environments prevail. Noise and uncertainty are inherent features of military operations,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-16 Lorenzo Nodari , Federico Cerutti

In Reward Learning (ReL), we are given feedback on an unknown target reward, and the goal is to use this information to recover it in order to carry out some downstream application, e.g., planning. When the feedback is not informative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Filippo Lazzati , Alberto Maria Metelli

Reinforcement learning algorithms solve sequential decision-making problems in probabilistic environments by optimizing for long-term reward. The desire to use reinforcement learning in safety-critical settings inspires a recent line of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-12-17 Koundinya Vajjha , Avraham Shinnar , Vasily Pestun , Barry Trager , Nathan Fulton

Reward models have been increasingly critical for improving the reasoning capability of LLMs. Existing research has shown that a well-trained reward model can substantially improve model performances at inference time via search. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-28 Jiaxuan Gao , Shusheng Xu , Wenjie Ye , Weilin Liu , Chuyi He , Wei Fu , Zhiyu Mei , Guangju Wang , Yi Wu

We study the extent to which standard machine learning algorithms rely on exchangeability and independence of data by introducing a monotone adversarial corruption model. In this model, an adversary, upon looking at a "clean" i.i.d.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Kasper Green Larsen , Chirag Pabbaraju , Abhishek Shetty

Thompson sampling is one of the most popular learning algorithms for online sequential decision-making problems and has rich real-world applications. However, current Thompson sampling algorithms are limited by the assumption that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Yinglun Xu , Zhiwei Wang , Gagandeep Singh

Reward specification plays a central role in reinforcement learning (RL), guiding the agent's behavior. To express non-Markovian rewards, formalisms such as reward machines have been introduced to capture dependencies on histories. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Rajarshi Roy , Anirban Majumdar , Ritam Raha , David Parker , Marta Kwiatkowska

In Reinforcement Learning the Q-learning algorithm provably converges to the optimal solution. However, as others have demonstrated, Q-learning can also overestimate the values and thereby spend too long exploring unhelpful states. Double…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-16 David Barber

Double Q-learning is a classical method for reducing overestimation bias, which is caused by taking maximum estimated values in the Bellman operation. Its variants in the deep Q-learning paradigm have shown great promise in producing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-17 Zhizhou Ren , Guangxiang Zhu , Hao Hu , Beining Han , Jianglun Chen , Chongjie Zhang

Bugs in popular distributed protocol implementations have been the source of many downtimes in popular internet services. We describe a randomized testing approach for distributed protocol implementations based on reinforcement learning.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Andrea Borgarelli , Constantin Enea , Rupak Majumdar , Srinidhi Nagendra

Reach-avoid optimal control problems, in which the system must reach certain goal conditions while staying clear of unacceptable failure modes, are central to safety and liveness assurance for autonomous robotic systems, but their exact…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-25 Kai-Chieh Hsu , Vicenç Rubies-Royo , Claire J. Tomlin , Jaime F. Fisac