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Reinforcement learning (RL)-based methods have achieved significant success in managing grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs). However, RL does not carry intrinsic guarantees of constraint satisfaction, which may lead to severe safety…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-13 Xiang Huo , Boming Liu , Jin Dong , Jianming Lian , Mingxi Liu

Sample inefficiency is a long-lasting problem in reinforcement learning (RL). The state-of-the-art estimates the optimal action values while it usually involves an extensive search over the state-action space and unstable optimization.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-27 Kaixiang Lin , Jiayu Zhou

We consider reinforcement learning (RL) methods for finding optimal policies in linear quadratic (LQ) mean field control (MFC) problems over an infinite horizon in continuous time, with common noise and entropy regularization. We study…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-06 Noufel Frikha , Huyên Pham , Xuanye Song

The objective in a traditional reinforcement learning (RL) problem is to find a policy that optimizes the expected value of a performance metric such as the infinite-horizon cumulative discounted or long-run average cost/reward. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-25 Prashanth L. A. , Michael Fu

We investigate the challenge of parametrizing policies for reinforcement learning (RL) in high-dimensional continuous action spaces. Our objective is to develop a multimodal policy that overcomes limitations inherent in the commonly-used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Zhiao Huang , Litian Liang , Zhan Ling , Xuanlin Li , Chuang Gan , Hao Su

Direct policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning and continuous control problems are a popular approach for a variety of reasons: 1) they are easy to implement without explicit knowledge of the underlying model 2) they are an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-26 Maryam Fazel , Rong Ge , Sham M. Kakade , Mehran Mesbahi

Generative models, particularly diffusion models, have achieved remarkable success in density estimation for multimodal data, drawing significant interest from the reinforcement learning (RL) community, especially in policy modeling in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Jinouwen Zhang , Rongkun Xue , Yazhe Niu , Yun Chen , Jing Yang , Hongsheng Li , Yu Liu

Natural policy gradient (NPG) methods are among the most widely used policy optimization algorithms in contemporary reinforcement learning. This class of methods is often applied in conjunction with entropy regularization -- an algorithmic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-09-13 Shicong Cen , Chen Cheng , Yuxin Chen , Yuting Wei , Yuejie Chi

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful framework for sequential decision-making in dynamic environments, particularly when system parameters are unknown. This paper investigates RL-based control for entropy-regularized…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-02 Gabriel Diaz , Lucky Li , Wenhao Zhang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) applications in real-world scenarios must prioritize safety and reliability, which impose strict constraints on agent behavior. Model-based RL leverages predictive world models for action planning and policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Artem Latyshev , Gregory Gorbov , Aleksandr I. Panov

Safe Reinforcement learning (Safe RL) aims at learning optimal policies while staying safe. A popular solution to Safe RL is shielding, which uses a logical safety specification to prevent an RL agent from taking unsafe actions. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-03-07 Wen-Chi Yang , Giuseppe Marra , Gavin Rens , Luc De Raedt

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has made significant strides in complex tasks but struggles in multi-task settings with different embodiments. World model methods offer scalability by learning a simulation of the environment but often rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Ignat Georgiev , Varun Giridhar , Nicklas Hansen , Animesh Garg

We present a new model-based algorithm for reinforcement learning (RL) which consists of explicit exploration and exploitation phases, and is applicable in large or infinite state spaces. The algorithm maintains a set of dynamics models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-03 Mikael Henaff

Reinforcement learning (RL) has proven remarkably effective at improving the accuracy of language models in verifiable and deterministic domains like mathematics. Here, we examine if current RL methods are also effective at optimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-19 Michael Bereket , Jure Leskovec

This paper considers the problem of learning safe policies in the context of reinforcement learning (RL). In particular, we consider the notion of probabilistic safety. This is, we aim to design policies that maintain the state of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-20 Weiqin Chen , Dharmashankar Subramanian , Santiago Paternain

In safety-critical applications, reinforcement learning (RL) needs to consider safety constraints. However, theoretical understandings of constrained RL for continuous control are largely absent. As a case study, this paper presents a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-07 Feiran Zhao , Keyou You

We study reinforcement learning (RL) in the setting of continuous time and space, for an infinite horizon with a discounted objective and the underlying dynamics driven by a stochastic differential equation. Built upon recent advances in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-19 Hanyang Zhao , Wenpin Tang , David D. Yao

Policy gradient (PG) methods are a class of effective reinforcement learning algorithms, particularly when dealing with continuous control problems. They rely on fresh on-policy data, making them sample-inefficient and requiring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Alessandro Montenegro , Federico Mansutti , Marco Mussi , Matteo Papini , Alberto Maria Metelli

The exploration-exploitation dilemma in reinforcement learning (RL) is a fundamental challenge to efficient RL algorithms. Existing algorithms for finite state and action discounted RL problems address this by assuming sufficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Caleb Ju , Guanghui Lan

We consider solutions to the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) regulator problem via policy gradient (PG) methods. Although PG methods have demonstrated strong theoretical guarantees in solving the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-15 Kasra Fallah , Leonardo F. Toso , James Anderson