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We show that the simplest actor-critic method -- a linear softmax policy updated with TD through interaction with a linear MDP, but featuring no explicit regularization or exploration -- does not merely find an optimal policy, but moreover…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-15 Yuzheng Hu , Ziwei Ji , Matus Telgarsky

Robust reinforcement learning is essential for deploying reinforcement learning algorithms in real-world scenarios where environmental uncertainty predominates. Traditional robust reinforcement learning often depends on rectangularity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Adil Zouitine , David Bertoin , Pierre Clavier , Matthieu Geist , Emmanuel Rachelson

In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic and asymptotic performances of the optimal robust policy and value function of robust Markov Decision Processes(MDPs), where the optimal robust policy and value function are solved only from a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-16 Wenhao Yang , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Practical reinforcement learning problems are often formulated as constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problems, in which the agent has to maximize the expected return while satisfying a set of prescribed safety constraints. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-23 Shin-ichi Maeda , Hayato Watahiki , Shintarou Okada , Masanori Koyama

Risk-averse decision-making under uncertainty in partially observable domains is a central challenge in artificial intelligence and is essential for developing reliable autonomous agents. The formal framework for such problems is the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Yaacov Pariente , Vadim Indelman

We study the problem of computing an optimal policy of an infinite-horizon discounted constrained Markov decision process (constrained MDP). Despite the popularity of Lagrangian-based policy search methods used in practice, the oscillation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-18 Dongsheng Ding , Chen-Yu Wei , Kaiqing Zhang , Alejandro Ribeiro

We consider the dynamic multichannel access problem, which can be formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). We first propose a model-free actor-critic deep reinforcement learning based framework to explore the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2018-10-10 Chen Zhong , Ziyang Lu , M. Cenk Gursoy , Senem Velipasalar

As an important framework for safe Reinforcement Learning, the Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) has been extensively studied in the recent literature. However, despite the rich results under various on-policy learning settings,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Fan Chen , Junyu Zhang , Zaiwen Wen

The development of Distributional Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has introduced a natural way to incorporate risk sensitivity into value-based and actor-critic methods by employing risk measures other than expectation in the value function.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Mehrdad Moghimi , Hyejin Ku

Existing imitation learning methods mainly focus on making an agent effectively mimic a demonstrated behavior, but do not address the potential contradiction between the behavior style and the objective of a task. There is a general lack of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-28 Mingxi Tan , Andong Tian , Ludovic Denoyer

We study the problem of computing deterministic optimal policies for constrained Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous state and action spaces, which are widely encountered in constrained dynamical systems. Designing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-07 Sergio Rozada , Dongsheng Ding , Antonio G. Marques , Alejandro Ribeiro

We study average-reward Markov decision processes (AMDPs) and develop novel first-order methods with strong theoretical guarantees for both policy optimization and policy evaluation. Compared with intensive research efforts in finite sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Tianjiao Li , Feiyang Wu , Guanghui Lan

We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-08 Hyeong Soo Chang

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

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) remains a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), primarily due to the curse of dimensionality induced by the non-stationarity of optimal policies. In this work,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-20 Semih Cayci , Atilla Eryilmaz

Actor-critic style two-time-scale algorithms are one of the most popular methods in reinforcement learning, and have seen great empirical success. However, their performance is not completely understood theoretically. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Sajad Khodadadian , Thinh T. Doan , Justin Romberg , Siva Theja Maguluri

The paper studies a distributed constrained optimization problem, where multiple agents connected in a network collectively minimize the sum of individual objective functions subject to a global constraint being an intersection of the local…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-03-08 Jinlong Lei , Han-Fu Chen , Hai-Tao Fang

Constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) are a common way to model safety constraints in reinforcement learning. State-of-the-art methods for efficiently solving CMDPs are based on primal-dual algorithms. For these algorithms, all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-22 Adrian Müller , Pragnya Alatur , Volkan Cevher , Giorgia Ramponi , Niao He

Designing model-free algorithms for distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) poses fundamental challenges. The robust Bellman operator is nonlinear in the transition kernel, which makes one-sample Bellman updates biased, while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Shengbo Wang , Zexi Zhang