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The option-critic architecture (Bacon, Harb, and Precup 2017) and several variants have successfully demonstrated the use of the options framework proposed by Sutton et al (Sutton, Precup, and Singh1999) to scale learning and planning in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-06-13 Elita Lobo , Scott Jordan

We establish an optimal sample complexity of $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ for obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal global policy using a single-timescale actor-critic (AC) algorithm in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Navdeep Kumar , Tehila Dahan , Lior Cohen , Ananyabrata Barua , Giorgia Ramponi , Kfir Yehuda Levy , Shie Mannor

Robust Reinforcement Learning aims to derive optimal behavior that accounts for model uncertainty in dynamical systems. However, previous studies have shown that by considering the worst case scenario, robust policies can be overly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-25 Esther Derman , Daniel J. Mankowitz , Timothy A. Mann , Shie Mannor

Considering the constrained stochastic optimization problem over a time-varying random network, where the agents are to collectively minimize a sum of objective functions subject to a common constraint set, we investigate asymptotic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-08 Shengchao Zhao , Xing-Min Chen , Yongchao Liu

Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques have drawn great attention in many challenging tasks, but their performance deteriorates dramatically when applied to real-world problems. Various methods, such as domain randomization, have been…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-05 Wangyang Yue , Yuan Zhou , Xiaochuan Zhang , Yuchen Hua , Zhiyuan Wang , Guang Kou

Actor-critic methods are widely used in offline reinforcement learning practice, but are not so well-understood theoretically. We propose a new offline actor-critic algorithm that naturally incorporates the pessimism principle, leading to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-20 Andrea Zanette , Martin J. Wainwright , Emma Brunskill

Synchronizing decisions across multiple agents in realistic settings is problematic since it requires agents to wait for other agents to terminate and communicate about termination reliably. Ideally, agents should learn and execute…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 Yuchen Xiao , Weihao Tan , Christopher Amato

We study the problem of asymptotic consensus as it occurs in a wide range of applications in both man-made and natural systems. In particular, we study systems with directed communication graphs that may change over time. We recently…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-11-09 Bernadette Charron-Bost , Matthias Függer , Thomas Nowak

In this paper, we propose a second-order deterministic actor-critic framework in reinforcement learning that extends the classical deterministic policy gradient method to exploit curvature information of the performance function. Building…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Arash Bahari Kordabad , Dean Brandner , Sebastien Gros , Sergio Lucia , Sadegh Soudjani

We develop an asymptotic theory of adversarial estimators ('A-estimators'). They generalize maximum-likelihood-type estimators ('M-estimators') as their average objective is maximized by some parameters and minimized by others. This class…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-06-20 Jonas Metzger

This paper proposes a novel approach for Asset-Liability Management (ALM) by employing continuous-time Reinforcement Learning (RL) with a linear-quadratic (LQ) formulation that incorporates both interim and terminal objectives. We develop a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Yilie Huang

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has proven a powerful technique in many sequential decision making domains. However, Robotics poses many challenges for RL, most notably training on a physical system can be expensive and dangerous, which…

Robotics · Computer Science 2017-10-19 Lerrel Pinto , Marcin Andrychowicz , Peter Welinder , Wojciech Zaremba , Pieter Abbeel

Despite the popularity of the actor-critic method and the practical needs of collaborative policy training, existing works typically either overlook environmental heterogeneity or give up personalization altogether by training a single…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Leo Muxing Wang , Pengkun Yang , Lili Su

This paper presents the first actor-critic algorithm for off-policy reinforcement learning. Our algorithm is online and incremental, and its per-time-step complexity scales linearly with the number of learned weights. Previous work on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Thomas Degris , Martha White , Richard S. Sutton

Multi-agent interactions are increasingly important in the context of reinforcement learning, and the theoretical foundations of policy gradient methods have attracted surging research interest. We investigate the global convergence of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-21 Sarath Pattathil , Kaiqing Zhang , Asuman Ozdaglar

Accurate value estimates are important for off-policy reinforcement learning. Algorithms based on temporal difference learning typically are prone to an over- or underestimation bias building up over time. In this paper, we propose a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-24 Nicolai Dorka , Tim Welschehold , Joschka Boedecker , Wolfram Burgard

In this paper, we study the problem of learning to satisfy temporal logic specifications with a group of agents in an unknown environment, which may exhibit probabilistic behaviour. From a learning perspective these specifications provide a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-02-10 Lewis Hammond , Alessandro Abate , Julian Gutierrez , Michael Wooldridge

We propose a new algorithm, Mean Actor-Critic (MAC), for discrete-action continuous-state reinforcement learning. MAC is a policy gradient algorithm that uses the agent's explicit representation of all action values to estimate the gradient…

Many reinforcement learning methods achieve great success in practice but lack theoretical foundation. In this paper, we study the convergence analysis on the problem of the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). The global linear convergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-09 Zeyu Jin , Johann Michael Schmitt , Zaiwen Wen

Risk-aware Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms like SAC and TD3 were shown empirically to outperform their risk-neutral counterparts in a variety of continuous-action tasks. However, the theoretical basis for the pessimistic objectives…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-27 Michal Nauman , Marek Cygan