Related papers: Consensus Based Stochastic Control
Real-world autonomous systems operate under uncertainty about both their pose and dynamics. Autonomous control systems must simultaneously perform estimation and control tasks to maintain robustness to changing dynamics or modeling errors.…
Deep reinforcement learning algorithms can perform poorly in real-world tasks due to the discrepancy between source and target environments. This discrepancy is commonly viewed as the disturbance in transition dynamics. Many existing…
This paper introduces an interacting-particle optimization method tailored to possibly non-convex composite optimization problems, which arise widely in signal processing. The proposed method, \emph{ProxiCBO}, integrates consensus-based…
Reinforcement learning has significantly enhanced the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in complex problem-solving tasks. Recently, the introduction of DeepSeek R1 has inspired a surge of interest in leveraging…
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…
Monte Carlo (MC) reinforcement learning suffers from high sample complexity, especially in environments with sparse rewards, large state spaces, and correlated trajectories. We address these limitations by reformulating episode selection as…
We study reinforcement learning in hybrid discrete-continuous action spaces, such as settings where the discrete component selects a regime (or index) and the continuous component optimizes within it -- a structure common in robotics,…
We consider network-based decentralized optimization problems, where each node in the network possesses a local function and the objective is to collectively attain a consensus solution that minimizes the sum of all the local functions. A…
Reinforcement Learning, particularly through policy gradient methods, has played a central role in enabling reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models. However, the optimization stability of policy gradients in this setting remains…
In this work we propose MirrorCBO, a consensus-based optimization (CBO) method which generalizes standard CBO in the same way that mirror descent generalizes gradient descent. For this we apply the CBO methodology to a swarm of dual…
We investigate Monte Carlo based algorithms for solving stochastic control problems with probabilistic constraints. Our motivation comes from microgrid management, where the controller tries to optimally dispatch a diesel generator while…
Leveraging planning during learning and decision-making is central to the long-term development of intelligent agents. Recent works have successfully combined tree-based search methods and self-play learning mechanisms to this end. However,…
The Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation algorithm is a foundation of many algorithmic frameworks for reinforcement learning (RL), and often an efficient approach to solving (or approximating the solution to) complex optimal control…
The naive application of Reinforcement Learning algorithms to continuous control problems -- such as locomotion and manipulation -- often results in policies which rely on high-amplitude, high-frequency control signals, known colloquially…
We investigate reinforcement learning in the setting of Markov decision processes for a large number of exchangeable agents interacting in a mean field manner. Applications include, for example, the control of a large number of robots…
We present a novel on-policy algorithm for solving stochastic optimal control (SOC) problems. By leveraging the Girsanov theorem, our method directly computes on-policy gradients of the SOC objective without expensive backpropagation…
Robust topology optimization (RTO) improves the robustness of designs with respect to random sources in real-world structures, yet an accurate sensitivity analysis requires the solution of many systems of equations at each optimization…
Maximum consensus estimation plays a critically important role in robust fitting problems in computer vision. Currently, the most prevalent algorithms for consensus maximization draw from the class of randomized hypothesize-and-verify…
We consider the problem of Cost-Aware Learning, where sampling different component functions of a finite-sum objective incurs different costs. The objective is to reach a target error while minimizing the total cost. First, we propose the…
A basic simulation-based reinforcement learning algorithm is the Monte Carlo Exploring States (MCES) method, also known as optimistic policy iteration, in which the value function is approximated by simulated returns and a greedy policy is…