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Related papers: Reinforcement Learning with Random Time Horizons

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We consider the problem of steering a system with unknown, stochastic dynamics to satisfy a rich, temporally layered task given as a signal temporal logic formula. We represent the system as a Markov decision process in which the states are…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2015-10-23 Austin Jones , Derya Aksaray , Zhaodan Kong , Mac Schwager , Calin Belta

In this work, we address the problem of determining reliable policies in reinforcement learning (RL), with a focus on optimization under uncertainty and the need for performance guarantees. While classical RL algorithms aim at maximizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Nadir Farhi

Despite the numerous advances, reinforcement learning remains away from widespread acceptance for autonomous controller design as compared to classical methods due to lack of ability to effectively tackle the reality gap. The reliance on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-23 Narendra Patwardhan , Zequn Wang

Markov reward processes (MRPs) are used to model stochastic phenomena arising in operations research, control engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence, as well as communication and transportation networks. In many of these cases,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-17 Ashwin Pananjady , Martin J. Wainwright

This survey (re)introduces reinforcement learning methods to economists. The curse of dimensionality limits how far exact dynamic programming can be effectively applied, forcing us to rely on suitably "small" problems or our ability to…

General Economics · Economics 2026-03-25 Pranjal Rawat

Deliberating on large or continuous state spaces have been long standing challenges in reinforcement learning. Temporal Abstraction have somewhat made this possible, but efficiently planing using temporal abstraction still remains an issue.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-03-21 Peeyush Kumar , Doina Precup

Standard reinforcement learning (RL) optimizes policies for reward but imposes few constraints on how decisions evolve over time. As a result, policies may achieve high performance while exhibiting temporally incoherent behavior such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Sukesh Subaharan

Many sequential decision-making problems that are currently automated, such as those in manufacturing or recommender systems, operate in an environment where there is either little uncertainty, or zero risk of catastrophe. As companies and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Marc Rigter

Reinforcement Learning Algorithms are predominantly developed for stationary environments, and the limited literature that considers nonstationary environments often involves specific assumptions about changes that can occur in transition…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-25 Ranga Shaarad Ayyagari , Revanth Raj Eega , Ambedkar Dukkipati

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a general framework for adaptive control, which has proven to be efficient in many domains, e.g., board games, video games or autonomous vehicles. In such problems, an agent faces a sequential decision-making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Olivier Buffet , Olivier Pietquin , Paul Weng

Reinforcement learning (RL) commonly relies on scalar rewards with limited ability to express temporal, conditional, or safety-critical goals, and can lead to reward hacking. Temporal logic expressible via the more general class of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Dominik Wagner , Leon Witzman , Luke Ong

Dynamic decisions are pivotal to economic policy making. We show how existing evidence from randomized control trials can be utilized to guide personalized decisions in challenging dynamic environments with budget and capacity constraints.…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-11-26 Karun Adusumilli , Friedrich Geiecke , Claudio Schilter

Model predictive control (MPC) is a powerful trajectory optimization control technique capable of controlling complex nonlinear systems while respecting system constraints and ensuring safe operation. The MPC's capabilities come at the cost…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-02-23 Eivind Bøhn , Sebastien Gros , Signe Moe , Tor Arne Johansen

This paper explores continuous-time and state-space optimal stopping problems from a reinforcement learning perspective. We begin by formulating the stopping problem using randomized stopping times, where the decision maker's control is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-12 Jodi Dianetti , Giorgio Ferrari , Renyuan Xu

Reinforcement learning is a framework for learning to act sequentially in an unknown environment. We propose a natural approach for modeling policy structure in policy gradients. The key idea is to optimize for a subset of future rewards:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Puneet Mathur , Branislav Kveton , Subhojyoti Mukherjee , Viet Dac Lai

A key barrier to using reinforcement learning (RL) in many real-world applications is the requirement of a large number of system interactions to learn a good control policy. Off-policy and Offline RL methods have been proposed to reduce…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-02 Wenqi Cui , Linbin Huang , Weiwei Yang , Baosen Zhang

In many real-world applications, safety constraints for reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are either unknown or not explicitly defined. We propose a framework that concurrently learns safety constraints and optimal RL policies in such…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-05-02 Lunet Yifru , Ali Baheri

We propose novel classical and quantum online algorithms for learning finite-horizon and infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Our algorithms are based on a hybrid exploration-generative reinforcement learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Andris Ambainis , Joao F. Doriguello , Debbie Lim

Many potential applications of reinforcement learning (RL) are stymied by the large numbers of samples required to learn an effective policy. This is especially true when applying RL to real-world control tasks, e.g. in the sciences or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-11 Viraj Mehta , Ian Char , Joseph Abbate , Rory Conlin , Mark D. Boyer , Stefano Ermon , Jeff Schneider , Willie Neiswanger

Policy gradient (PG) methods are successful approaches to deal with continuous reinforcement learning (RL) problems. They learn stochastic parametric (hyper)policies by either exploring in the space of actions or in the space of parameters.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Alessandro Montenegro , Marco Mussi , Alberto Maria Metelli , Matteo Papini