English
Related papers

Related papers: Stabilizing Temporal Difference Learning via Impli…

200 papers

TD($\lambda$) with function approximation has proved empirically successful for some complex reinforcement learning problems. For linear approximation, TD($\lambda$) has been shown to minimise the squared error between the approximate value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Lex Weaver , Jonathan Baxter

While there are convergence guarantees for temporal difference (TD) learning when using linear function approximators, the situation for nonlinear models is far less understood, and divergent examples are known. Here we take a first step…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-12 David Brandfonbrener , Joan Bruna

Temporal-Difference (TD) learning with nonlinear smooth function approximation for policy evaluation has achieved great success in modern reinforcement learning. It is shown that such a problem can be reformulated as a stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-25 Shuang Qiu , Zhuoran Yang , Xiaohan Wei , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang

In this paper we present the first empirical study of the emphatic temporal-difference learning algorithm (ETD), comparing it with conventional temporal-difference learning, in particular, with linear TD(0), on on-policy and off-policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-05-15 Sina Ghiassian , Banafsheh Rafiee , Richard S. Sutton

Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful, general tool for learning complex behaviors. However, its sample efficiency is often impractically large for solving challenging real-world problems, even with off-policy algorithms such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Vitchyr Pong , Shixiang Gu , Murtaza Dalal , Sergey Levine

We present a novel $l_1$ regularized off-policy convergent TD-learning method (termed RO-TD), which is able to learn sparse representations of value functions with low computational complexity. The algorithmic framework underlying RO-TD…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Bo Liu , Sridhar Mahadevan , Ji Liu

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) offers an appealing approach to real-world tasks by learning policies from pre-collected datasets without interacting with the environment. However, the performance of existing offline RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-14 Peng Cheng , Xianyuan Zhan , Zhihao Wu , Wenjia Zhang , Shoucheng Song , Han Wang , Youfang Lin , Li Jiang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) can model complex behavior policies for goal-directed sequential decision making tasks. A hallmark of RL algorithms is Temporal Difference (TD) learning: value function for the current state is moved towards a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-07 Sahil Sharma , Girish Raguvir J , Srivatsan Ramesh , Balaraman Ravindran

Ensuring that reinforcement learning (RL) controllers satisfy safety and reliability constraints in real-world settings remains challenging: state-avoidance and constrained Markov decision processes often fail to capture trajectory-level…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Alper Kamil Bozkurt , Calin Belta , Ming C. Lin

Policy evaluation in reinforcement learning is often conducted using two-timescale stochastic approximation, which results in various gradient temporal difference methods such as GTD(0), GTD2, and TDC. Here, we provide convergence rate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-05 Gal Dalal , Balazs Szorenyi , Gugan Thoppe

Reinforcement learning algorithms typically rely on the assumption that the environment dynamics and value function can be expressed in terms of a Markovian state representation. However, when state information is only partially observable,…

In this work, we study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) in unknown stabilizable linear dynamical systems. When learning a dynamical system, one needs to stabilize the unknown dynamics in order to avoid system blow-ups. We propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-06 Sahin Lale , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Babak Hassibi , Anima Anandkumar

The analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning in the average-reward setting faces notable theoretical difficulties because the Bellman operator is not contractive with respect to any norm. This complicates standard analyses of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Haoxing Tian , Zaiwei Chen , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis , Alex Olshevsky

We study the use of Temporal-Difference learning for estimating the structural parameters in dynamic discrete choice models. Our algorithms are based on the conditional choice probability approach but use functional approximations to…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-12-23 Karun Adusumilli , Dita Eckardt

Emphatic algorithms are temporal-difference learning algorithms that change their effective state distribution by selectively emphasizing and de-emphasizing their updates on different time steps. Recent works by Sutton, Mahmood and White…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-07-07 A. Rupam Mahmood , Huizhen Yu , Martha White , Richard S. Sutton

Robot learning in high-dimensional control settings, such as humanoid locomotion, presents persistent challenges for reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms due to unstable dynamics, complex contact interactions, and sensitivity to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-21 Khang Nguyen , Khai Nguyen , An T. Le , Jan Peters , Manfred Huber , Ngo Anh Vien , Minh Nhat Vu

Temporal credit assignment in reinforcement learning is challenging due to delayed and stochastic outcomes. Monte Carlo targets can bridge long delays between action and consequence but lead to high-variance targets due to stochasticity.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Aditya A. Ramesh , Kenny Young , Louis Kirsch , Jürgen Schmidhuber

Reinforcement learning has been applied to many interesting problems such as the famous TD-gammon and the inverted helicopter flight. However, little effort has been put into developing methods to learn policies for complex persistent tasks…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-06-22 Xiao Li , Calin Belta

Predictive control approaches based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) have gained significant attention in microgrid energy optimization. However, existing research often overlooks the issue of uncertainty stemming from imperfect…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Fulong Yao , Wanqing Zhao , Matthew Forshaw

Policy iteration is one of the classical frameworks of reinforcement learning, which requires a known initial stabilizing control. However, finding the initial stabilizing control depends on the known system model. To relax this requirement…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-20 Dongdong Li , Jiuxiang Dong