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Model-based reinforcement learning algorithms, which aim to learn a model of the environment to make decisions, are more sample efficient than their model-free counterparts. The sample efficiency of model-based approaches relies on whether…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Zhihai Wang , Jie Wang , Qi Zhou , Bin Li , Houqiang Li

Model-free deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have achieved tremendous success on a range of challenging tasks. However, safety concerns remain when these methods are deployed on real-world applications, necessitating risk-aware…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Alonso Granados , Jason Pacheco

We study the efficiency of Thompson sampling for contextual bandits. Existing Thompson sampling-based algorithms need to construct a Laplace approximation (i.e., a Gaussian distribution) of the posterior distribution, which is inefficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Pan Xu , Hongkai Zheng , Eric Mazumdar , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Anima Anandkumar

Reinforcement learning, mathematically described by Markov Decision Problems, may be approached either through dynamic programming or policy search. Actor-critic algorithms combine the merits of both approaches by alternating between steps…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-31 Harshat Kumar , Alec Koppel , Alejandro Ribeiro

Advances in Reinforcement Learning (RL) have demonstrated data efficiency and optimal control over large state spaces at the cost of scalable performance. Genetic methods, on the other hand, provide scalability but depict hyperparameter…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-19 Karush Suri , Xiao Qi Shi , Konstantinos N. Plataniotis , Yuri A. Lawryshyn

Despite definite success in deep reinforcement learning problems, actor-critic algorithms are still confronted with sample inefficiency in complex environments, particularly in tasks where efficient exploration is a bottleneck. These…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Yannis Flet-Berliac , Johan Ferret , Olivier Pietquin , Philippe Preux , Matthieu Geist

In current model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, stability criteria based on sampling methods are commonly utilized to guide policy optimization. However, these criteria only guarantee the infinite-time convergence of the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-10-16 Shengjie Wang , Fengbo Lan , Xiang Zheng , Yuxue Cao , Oluwatosin Oseni , Haotian Xu , Tao Zhang , Yang Gao

We study robust reinforcement learning (RL) with the goal of determining a well-performing policy that is robust against model mismatch between the training simulator and the testing environment. Previous policy-based robust RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-12 Ruida Zhou , Tao Liu , Min Cheng , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods have achieved state-of-the-art results on a range of multi-agent tasks. Yet, MARL algorithms typically require significantly more environment interactions than their single-agent…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Tom Danino , Nahum Shimkin

Soft policies in reinforcement learning define policies as Boltzmann distributions over state-action value functions, providing a principled mechanism for balancing exploration and exploitation. However, realizing such soft policies in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Donghyeon Ki , Hee-Jun Ahn , Kyungyoon Kim , Byung-Jun Lee

Deep off-policy actor-critic algorithms have emerged as the leading framework for reinforcement learning in continuous control domains. However, most of these algorithms suffer from poor sample efficiency, especially in environments with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-25 Zahra Shahrooei , Ali Baheri

In many robotic applications, some aspects of the system dynamics can be modeled accurately while others are difficult to obtain or model. We present a novel reinforcement learning (RL) method for continuous state and action spaces that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-06 Tomoki Nishi , Prashant Doshi , Michael R. James , Danil Prokhorov

We present a scalable and effective exploration strategy based on Thompson sampling for reinforcement learning (RL). One of the key shortcomings of existing Thompson sampling algorithms is the need to perform a Gaussian approximation of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Haque Ishfaq , Qingfeng Lan , Pan Xu , A. Rupam Mahmood , Doina Precup , Anima Anandkumar , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli

Actor-critic algorithms have become a cornerstone in reinforcement learning (RL), leveraging the strengths of both policy-based and value-based methods. Despite recent progress in understanding their statistical efficiency, no existing work…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-07 Kevin Tan , Wei Fan , Yuting Wei

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been widely applied to many control tasks and substantially improved the performances compared to conventional control methods in many domains where the reward function is well defined. However, for many…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-22 Baohe Zhang , Yuan Zhang , Lilli Frison , Thomas Brox , Joschka Bödecker

Deep Actor-Critic algorithms, which combine Actor-Critic with deep neural network (DNN), have been among the most prevalent reinforcement learning algorithms for decision-making problems in simulated environments. However, the existing deep…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-19 Kexuan Wang , An Liu , Baishuo Lin

High-precision control tasks present substantial challenges for reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, frequently resulting in suboptimal performance attributed to network approximation inaccuracies and inadequate sample quality.These…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-05 Donghe Chen , Yubin Peng , Tengjie Zheng , Han Wang , Chaoran Qu , Lin Cheng

We propose WSAC (Weighted Safe Actor-Critic), a novel algorithm for Safe Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) under functional approximation, which can robustly optimize policies to improve upon an arbitrary reference policy with limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-01 Honghao Wei , Xiyue Peng , Arnob Ghosh , Xin Liu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Qinxun Bai , Yuxuan Han , Wei Xu , Zhengyuan Zhou

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…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-03-31 Jingliang Duan , Jie Li , Qiang Ge , Shengbo Eben Li , Monimoy Bujarbaruah , Fei Ma , Dezhao Zhang