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We address the problem of finding the optimal policy of a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) using a gradient descent-based algorithm. Previous results have shown that a primal-dual approach can achieve an $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

Option-critic learning is a general-purpose reinforcement learning (RL) framework that aims to address the issue of long term credit assignment by leveraging temporal abstractions. However, when dealing with extended timescales, discounting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-21 Akshay Dharmavaram , Matthew Riemer , Shalabh Bhatnagar

We present two Policy Gradient-based algorithms with general parametrization in the context of infinite-horizon average reward Markov Decision Process (MDP). The first one employs Implicit Gradient Transport for variance reduction, ensuring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Swetha Ganesh , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Policy gradient methods, which have been extensively studied in the last decade, offer an effective and efficient framework for reinforcement learning problems. However, their performances can often be unsatisfactory, suffering from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Shihab Ahmed , El Houcine Bergou , Aritra Dutta , Yue Wang

We focus on parameterized policy search for reinforcement learning over continuous action spaces. Typically, one assumes the score function associated with a policy is bounded, which fails to hold even for Gaussian policies. To properly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-01 Amrit Singh Bedi , Souradip Chakraborty , Anjaly Parayil , Brian Sadler , Pratap Tokekar , Alec Koppel

Policy gradient methods are extensively used in reinforcement learning as a way to optimize expected return. In this paper, we explore the evolution of the policy parameters, for a special class of exactly solvable POMDPs, as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-04 Gavin McCracken , Colin Daniels , Rosie Zhao , Anna Brandenberger , Prakash Panangaden , Doina Precup

This paper discusses theoretical and experimental aspects of gradient-based approaches to the direct optimization of policy performance in controlled POMDPs. We introduce GPOMDP, a REINFORCE-like algorithm for estimating an approximation to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-08 Jonathan Baxter , Peter L. Bartlett

Modern policy optimization methods roughly follow the policy mirror descent (PMD) algorithmic template, for which there are by now numerous theoretical convergence results. However, most of these either target tabular environments, or can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Uri Sherman , Tomer Koren , Yishay Mansour

In this short note, we give the convergence analysis of the policy in the recent famous policy mirror descent (PMD). We mainly consider the unregularized setting following [11] with generalized Bregman divergence. The difference is that we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-04 Dachao Lin , Zhihua Zhang

Policy gradient methods are one of the most successful approaches for solving challenging reinforcement learning problems. Despite their empirical successes, many state-of-the-art policy gradient algorithms for discounted problems deviate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Weizhen Wang , Jianping He , Xiaoming Duan

Standard reinforcement learning methods aim to master one way of solving a task whereas there may exist multiple near-optimal policies. Being able to identify this collection of near-optimal policies can allow a domain expert to efficiently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-04 Muhammad A. Masood , Finale Doshi-Velez

This paper is concerned with multi-agent optimization problem. A distributed randomized gradient-free mirror descent (DRGFMD) method is developed by introducing a randomized gradient-free oracle in the mirror descent scheme where the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-12 Zhan Yu , Daniel W. C. Ho , Deming Yuan

Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) provide a promising framework for computing reliable policies in the face of model errors. Many successful reinforcement learning algorithms build on variations of policy-gradient methods, but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-15 Qiuhao Wang , Chin Pang Ho , Marek Petrik

We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Mengmeng Li , Daniel Kuhn , Tobias Sutter

We study offline Reinforcement Learning in large infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the reward and transition models are linearly realizable under a known feature map. Starting from the classic linear-program…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Gergely Neu , Nneka Okolo

Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Mohamad Louai Shehab , Antoine Aspeel , Necmiye Ozay

Policy gradient (PG) methods are a widely used reinforcement learning methodology in many applications such as video games, autonomous driving, and robotics. In spite of its empirical success, a rigorous understanding of the global…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-30 Kaiqing Zhang , Alec Koppel , Hao Zhu , Tamer Başar

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

In this paper, we propose a policy gradient method for confounded partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with continuous state and observation spaces in the offline setting. We first establish a novel identification result…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-04 Mao Hong , Zhengling Qi , Yanxun Xu

Safety is an essential requirement for reinforcement learning systems. The newly emerging framework of robust constrained Markov decision processes allows learning policies that satisfy long-term constraints while providing guarantees under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-19 David M. Bossens , Atsushi Nitanda