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Offline reinforcement learning (RL) aims to find an optimal policy for Markov decision processes (MDPs) using a pre-collected dataset. In this work, we revisit the linear programming (LP) reformulation of Markov decision processes for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Asuman Ozdaglar , Sarath Pattathil , Jiawei Zhang , Kaiqing Zhang

This paper investigates the motion planning of autonomous dynamical systems modeled by Markov decision processes (MDP) with unknown transition probabilities over continuous state and action spaces. Linear temporal logic (LTL) is used to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-25 Mingyu Cai , Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Shaoping Xiao , Alessandro Abate , Zhen Kan

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL), a crucial field due to its ability to enhance decision-making in scenarios where it is essential to manage uncertainty and minimize potential adverse outcomes. Particularly, our work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-11 Dake Zhang , Boxiang Lyu , Shuang Qiu , Mladen Kolar , Tong Zhang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has gained increasing attraction in the academia and tech industry with launches to a variety of impactful applications and products. Although research is being actively conducted on many fronts (e.g., offline…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-13 Ruiyang Xu , Zhengxing Chen

To ensure the usefulness of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real systems, it is crucial to ensure they are robust to noise and adversarial attacks. In adversarial RL, an external attacker has the power to manipulate the victim agent's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Jeremy McMahan , Young Wu , Xiaojin Zhu , Qiaomin Xie

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

We present the first model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm to synthesise policies for an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), such that a linear time property is satisfied. The given temporal property is converted into a Limit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-19 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening

We consider the problem of Reinforcement Learning for nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems. We show that in the RL setting, there is an inherent ``Curse of Variance" in addition to Bellman's infamous ``Curse of Dimensionality", in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-30 Raman Goyal , Suman Chakravorty , Ran Wang , Mohamed Naveed Gul Mohamed

The linear programming (LP) approach has a long history in the theory of approximate dynamic programming. When it comes to computation, however, the LP approach often suffers from poor scalability. In this work, we introduce a relaxed…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-12-01 Andrea Martinelli , Matilde Gargiani , John Lygeros

We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes with continuous state spaces, where data are generated online from a single trajectory under a Markovian behavior policy. To avoid maintaining an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Shengbo Wang

This paper addresses the problem of learning control policies for mobile robots, modeled as unknown Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), that are tasked with temporal logic missions, such as sequencing, coverage, or surveillance. The MDP…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-13 Yiannis Kantaros

Reinforcement learning (RL) in large environments often suffers from severe computational bottlenecks, as conventional regret minimization algorithms require repeated, costly calls to planning and statistical estimation oracles. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Haichen Hu , Jian Qian , David Simchi-Levi

While reinforcement learning has been increasingly applied to stochastic control, few studies have systematically examined policy-based methods in queuing environments modeled as a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP). To address this gap,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Joseph Walton , Gabriel Nicolosi

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

This paper proposes a novel termination criterion, termed the advantage gap function, for finite state and action Markov decision processes (MDP) and reinforcement learning (RL). By incorporating this advantage gap function into the design…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Caleb Ju , Guanghui Lan

Real-world reinforcement learning is often \emph{nonstationary}: rewards and dynamics drift, accelerate, oscillate, and trigger abrupt switches in the optimal action. Existing theory often represents nonstationarity with coarse-scale models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Zuyuan Zhang , Mahdi Imani , Tian Lan

We study off-policy reinforcement learning for controlling continuous-time Markov diffusion processes with discrete-time observations and actions. We consider model-free algorithms with function approximation that learn value and advantage…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Wenlong Mou

Non-stationary environments are challenging for reinforcement learning algorithms. If the state transition and/or reward functions change based on latent factors, the agent is effectively tasked with optimizing a behavior that maximizes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Bruno C. da Silva

State-of-the-art efficient model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms typically act by iteratively solving empirical models, i.e., by performing \emph{full-planning} on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) built by the gathered…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-01 Yonathan Efroni , Nadav Merlis , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Shie Mannor

We study multi-task reinforcement learning (RL) in tabular episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs). We formulate a heterogeneous multi-player RL problem, in which a group of players concurrently face similar but not necessarily identical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-19 Chicheng Zhang , Zhi Wang