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We introduce two new no-regret algorithms for the stochastic shortest path (SSP) problem with a linear MDP that significantly improve over the only existing results of (Vial et al., 2021). Our first algorithm is computationally efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Liyu Chen , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

Strong worst-case performance bounds for episodic reinforcement learning exist but fortunately in practice RL algorithms perform much better than such bounds would predict. Algorithms and theory that provide strong problem-dependent bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

Meta-reinforcement learning has widely been used as a learning-to-learn framework to solve unseen tasks with limited experience. However, the aspect of constraint violations has not been adequately addressed in the existing works, making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Vanshaj Khattar , Yuhao Ding , Bilgehan Sel , Javad Lavaei , Ming Jin

We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with linear function approximation under drifting environment. Specifically, both the reward and state transition functions can evolve over time but their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Huozhi Zhou , Jinglin Chen , Lav R. Varshney , Ashish Jagmohan

We revisit offline reinforcement learning on episodic time-homogeneous Markov Decision Processes (MDP). For tabular MDP with $S$ states and $A$ actions, or linear MDP with anchor points and feature dimension $d$, given the collected $K$…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-11 Tongzheng Ren , Jialian Li , Bo Dai , Simon S. Du , Sujay Sanghavi

We study regret minimization for reinforcement learning (RL) in Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs) with context in hindsight. We design a novel model-based algorithmic framework which can be instantiated with both a model-optimistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Runlong Zhou , Ruosong Wang , Simon S. Du

We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon average-reward settings with linear MDPs. Previous work addresses this problem by approximating the average-reward setting by discounted setting and employing a value iteration-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-17 Kihyuk Hong , Ambuj Tewari

A large variety of real-world Reinforcement Learning (RL) tasks is characterized by a complex and heterogeneous structure that makes end-to-end (or flat) approaches hardly applicable or even infeasible. Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-12 Gianluca Drappo , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

Achieving sample efficiency in online episodic reinforcement learning (RL) requires optimally balancing exploration and exploitation. When it comes to a finite-horizon episodic Markov decision process with $S$ states, $A$ actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved tremendous success in recent years. However, the classical foundations of RL do not account for the risk sensitivity of the objective function, which is critical in various fields, including…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Mohammad Alipour-Vaezi , Huaiyang Zhong , Kwok-Leung Tsui , Sajad Khodadadian

In this paper, we study the problem of efficient online reinforcement learning in the infinite horizon setting when there is an offline dataset to start with. We assume that the offline dataset is generated by an expert but with unknown…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-05 Dengwang Tang , Rahul Jain , Botao Hao , Zheng Wen

While Bayesian-based exploration often demonstrates superior empirical performance compared to bonus-based methods in model-based reinforcement learning (RL), its theoretical understanding remains limited for model-free settings. Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 He Wang , Xingyu Xu , Yuejie Chi

We study regret minimization for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under cost constraints. We start by designing a policy optimization algorithm with carefully designed action-value estimator and bonus term,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Liyu Chen , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

In Reinforcement Learning (RL), tasks with instantaneous hard constraints present significant challenges, particularly when the decision space is non-convex or non-star-convex. This issue is especially relevant in domains like autonomous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Amirhossein Roknilamouki , Arnob Ghosh , Ming Shi , Fatemeh Nourzad , Eylem Ekici , Ness B. Shroff

We study meta-reinforcement learning in finite-horizon MDPs where related tasks share similar structures in their optimal action-value functions. Specifically, we posit a linear representation $Q^*_h(s,a)=\Phi_h(s,a)\,\theta^{(k)}_h$ and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Runlin Zhou , Chixiang Chen , Elynn Chen

We study the reinforcement learning (RL) problem in a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP), where an agent explores the environment to maximize the expected cumulative reward while satisfying a single constraint on the expected total…

Time-inhomogeneous finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP) are frequently employed to model decision-making in dynamic treatment regimes and other statistical reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios. These fields, especially healthcare…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Elynn Chen , Sai Li , Michael I. Jordan

This paper addresses the poor finite-horizon performance of existing online \emph{restless bandit} (RB) algorithms, which stems from the prohibitive sample complexity of learning a full \emph{Markov decision process} (MDP) for each agent.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Jiamin Xu , Ivan Nazarov , Aditya Rastogi , África Periáñez , Kyra Gan

In many applications of Reinforcement Learning (RL), it is critically important that the algorithm performs safely, such that instantaneous hard constraints are satisfied at each step, and unsafe states and actions are avoided. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-10 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness Shroff

We study reinforcement learning in non-episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs). We propose two near-optimal and oracle-efficient algorithms for FMDPs. Assuming oracle access to an FMDP planner, they enjoy a Bayesian and a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-09 Ziping Xu , Ambuj Tewari