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We study infinite-horizon Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with general policy parameterizations and multi-layer neural network critics. Existing theoretical analyses for constrained reinforcement learning largely rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Anirudh Satheesh , Pankaj Kumar Barman , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Montaser Mohammedalamen , Michael Bowling

An in-depth understanding of the particular environment is crucial in reinforcement learning (RL). To address this challenge, the decision-making process of a mobile collaborative robotic assistant modeled by the Markov decision process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Mónika Farsang , Luca Szegletes

We present a distributional approach to theoretical analyses of reinforcement learning algorithms for constant step-sizes. We demonstrate its effectiveness by presenting simple and unified proofs of convergence for a variety of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-30 Philip Amortila , Doina Precup , Prakash Panangaden , Marc G. Bellemare

This paper addresses the challenge of solving Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with $d > 1$ constraints when the transition dynamics are unknown, but samples can be drawn from a generative model. We propose a model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Max Buckley , Konstantinos Papathanasiou , Andreas Spanopoulos

We study the sample complexity of obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in \emph{Robust} discounted Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs), given only access to a generative model of the nominal kernel. This problem is widely studied in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Pierre Clavier , Erwan Le Pennec , Matthieu Geist

Recent research has revived and amplified interest in algorithms for undiscounted average reward reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon, non-episodic (continuing) tasks. Semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs) are of particular interest.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Erel Shtossel , Alicia Vidler , Uri Shaham , Gal A. Kaminka

While standard reinforcement learning optimizes a single reward signal, many applications require optimizing a nonlinear utility $f(J_1^\pi,\dots,J_M^\pi)$ over multiple objectives, where each $J_m^\pi$ denotes the expected discounted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Swetha Ganesh , Vaneet Aggarwal

We study infinite-horizon average-reward Markov decision processes (AMDPs) in the context of general function approximation. Specifically, we propose a novel algorithmic framework named Local-fitted Optimization with OPtimism (LOOP), which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-22 Jianliang He , Han Zhong , Zhuoran Yang

In reinforcement learning (RL) , one of the key components is policy evaluation, which aims to estimate the value function (i.e., expected long-term accumulated reward) of a policy. With a good policy evaluation method, the RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-25 Yue Wang , Wei Chen , Yuting Liu , Zhi-Ming Ma , Tie-Yan Liu

Bilevel reinforcement learning (BRL) has emerged as a powerful framework for aligning generative models, yet its theoretical foundations, especially sample complexity bounds, remain underexplored. In this work, we present the first sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Mudit Gaur , Utsav Singh , Amrit Singh Bedi , Raghu Pasupathu , Vaneet Aggarwal

We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-11 Aymen Al Marjani , Alexandre Proutiere

We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation and finite-memory approximations for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs). We first present an algorithm for the value evaluation of finite-memory feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-22 Ali Devran Kara

We address the problem of computing reliable policies in reinforcement learning problems with limited data. In particular, we compute policies that achieve good returns with high confidence when deployed. This objective, known as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Bahram Behzadian , Reazul Hasan Russel , Marek Petrik , Chin Pang Ho

We study the off-policy evaluation (OPE) problem in reinforcement learning with linear function approximation, which aims to estimate the value function of a target policy based on the offline data collected by a behavior policy. We propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-05 Yifei Min , Tianhao Wang , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

We consider the batch (off-line) policy learning problem in the infinite horizon Markov Decision Process. Motivated by mobile health applications, we focus on learning a policy that maximizes the long-term average reward. We propose a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Peng Liao , Zhengling Qi , Runzhe Wan , Predrag Klasnja , Susan Murphy

In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-07-10 Naci Saldi

In this paper, a sparse Markov decision process (MDP) with novel causal sparse Tsallis entropy regularization is proposed.The proposed policy regularization induces a sparse and multi-modal optimal policy distribution of a sparse MDP. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-10-16 Kyungjae Lee , Sungjoon Choi , Songhwai Oh

We propose universal randomized function approximation-based empirical value iteration (EVI) algorithms for Markov decision processes. The `empirical' nature comes from each iteration being done empirically from samples available from…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-04-25 William B. Haskell , Rahul Jain , Hiteshi Sharma , Pengqian Yu

We consider non-standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the target function is not only a simple expectation of the accumulated reward. Instead, we consider rather general functionals of the joint distribution of terminal state and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Nicole Bäuerle , Tamara Göll , Anna Jaśkiewicz