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We propose and analyze a reinforcement learning principle that approximates the Bellman equations by enforcing their validity only along an user-defined space of test functions. Focusing on applications to model-free offline RL with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-13 Andrea Zanette , Martin J. Wainwright

As autonomous robots move into complex, dynamic real-world environments, they must learn to navigate safely in real time, yet anticipating all possible behaviors is infeasible. We propose a composable, model-free reinforcement learning…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Xinhuan Sang , Abdelrahman Abdelgawad , Roberto Tron

We present a distributional approach to theoretical analyses of reinforcement learning algorithms for constant step-sizes. We demonstrate its effectiveness by presenting simple and unified proofs of convergence for a variety of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-30 Philip Amortila , Doina Precup , Prakash Panangaden , Marc G. Bellemare

We study the problem of learning safe control policies that are also effective; i.e., maximizing the probability of satisfying a linear temporal logic (LTL) specification of a task, and the discounted reward capturing the (classic) control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Alper Kamil Bozkurt , Yu Wang , Miroslav Pajic

One of the most natural approaches to reinforcement learning (RL) with function approximation is value iteration, which inductively generates approximations to the optimal value function by solving a sequence of regression problems. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Noah Golowich , Ankur Moitra

We study reinforcement learning (RL) for a class of continuous-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control problems for diffusions, where states are scalar-valued and running control rewards are absent but volatilities of the state processes depend…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Yilie Huang , Yanwei Jia , Xun Yu Zhou

Value function approximation is important in modern reinforcement learning (RL) problems especially when the state space is (infinitely) large. Despite the importance and wide applicability of value function approximation, its theoretical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-24 Hanlin Zhu , Ruosong Wang , Jason D. Lee

We study the constrained reinforcement learning problem, in which an agent aims to maximize the expected cumulative reward subject to a constraint on the expected total value of a utility function. In contrast to existing model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Arnob Ghosh , Xingyu Zhou , Ness Shroff

We study reinforcement learning under model misspecification, where we do not have access to the true environment but only to a reasonably close approximation to it. We address this problem by extending the framework of robust MDPs to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-10 Aurko Roy , Huan Xu , Sebastian Pokutta

Model-free reinforcement learning based methods such as Proximal Policy Optimization, or Q-learning typically require thousands of interactions with the environment to approximate the optimum controller which may not always be feasible in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-16 Narendra Patwardhan , Zequn Wang

We study lifelong reinforcement learning (RL) in a regret minimization setting of linear contextual Markov decision process (MDP), where the agent needs to learn a multi-task policy while solving a streaming sequence of tasks. We propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-02 Sanae Amani , Lin F. Yang , Ching-An Cheng

We present an efficient algorithm for model-free episodic reinforcement learning on large (potentially continuous) state-action spaces. Our algorithm is based on a novel $Q$-learning policy with adaptive data-driven discretization. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-20 Sean R. Sinclair , Siddhartha Banerjee , Christina Lee Yu

Reinforcement learning (RL) for exponential-utility optimization in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) lacks principled value-based algorithms. We address this gap in the fixed risk-aversion setting. Building on the Bellman-type…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Gugan Thoppe , L. A. Prashanth , Ankur Naskar , Sanjay Bhat

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Mridul Agarwal , Vaneet Aggarwal

In many real-world settings, reinforcement learning systems suffer performance degradation when the environment encountered at deployment differs from that observed during training. Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DR-RL)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Debamita Ghosh , George K. Atia , Yue Wang

We study reinforcement learning for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with infinite observation and state spaces, which remains less investigated theoretically. To this end, we make the first attempt at bridging partial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Qi Cai , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

Offline reinforcement learning, which seeks to utilize offline/historical data to optimize sequential decision-making strategies, has gained surging prominence in recent studies. Due to the advantage that appropriate function approximators…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-14 Ming Yin , Yaqi Duan , Mengdi Wang , Yu-Xiang Wang

Reinforcement learning (RL) with continuous time and state/action spaces is often data-intensive and brittle under nuisance variability and shift, motivating methods that exploit value-preserving structures to stabilize and improve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Zuyuan Zhang , Fei Xu Yu , Tian Lan

We provide theoretical investigations into off-policy evaluation in reinforcement learning using function approximators for (marginalized) importance weights and value functions. Our contributions include: (1) A new estimator, MWL, that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 Masatoshi Uehara , Jiawei Huang , Nan Jiang

We study the estimation of the value function for continuous-time Markov diffusion processes using a single, discretely observed ergodic trajectory. Our work provides non-asymptotic statistical guarantees for the least-squares…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-07 Wenlong Mou