Related papers: Beyond the Bellman Fixed Point: Geometry and Fast …
Value Iteration (VI) is foundational to the theory and practice of modern reinforcement learning, and it is known to converge at a $\mathcal{O}(\gamma^k)$-rate, where $\gamma$ is the discount factor. Surprisingly, however, the optimal rate…
Most of the policy evaluation algorithms are based on the theories of Bellman Expectation and Optimality Equation, which derive two popular approaches - Policy Iteration (PI) and Value Iteration (VI). However, multi-step bootstrapping is…
We consider infinite-horizon $\gamma$-discounted Markov Decision Processes, for which it is known that there exists a stationary optimal policy. We consider the algorithm Value Iteration and the sequence of policies $\pi_1,...,\pi_k$ it…
In this paper, we study the theoretical properties of the projected Bellman equation (PBE) and two algorithms to solve this equation: linear Q-learning and approximate value iteration (AVI). We consider two sufficient conditions for the…
Fitted $Q$-iteration (FQI) and soft FQI are widely used value-based methods for offline reinforcement learning, but their standard stability guarantees often depend on Bellman completeness, a strong closure condition that can fail under…
This paper studies value iteration for infinite horizon contracting Markov decision processes under convexity assumptions and when the state space is uncountable. The original value iteration is replaced with a more tractable form and the…
While Value Iteration (VI) is one of the most fundamental algorithms in Reinforcement Learning, its theoretical convergence guarantees still exhibit a persistent mismatch with empirical behavior. In the discounted-reward case, classical…
This paper develops a joint spectral radius (JSR) framework for analyzing rank-one deflated Q-value iteration (Q-VI) in discounted Markov decision process control. Focusing on an all-ones residual correction, we interpret the resulting…
In this study, we consider the application of max-plus-linear approximators for Q-function in offline reinforcement learning of discounted Markov decision processes. In particular, we incorporate these approximators to propose novel fitted…
Q-functions are widely used in discrete-time learning and control to model future costs arising from a given control policy, when the initial state and input are given. Although some of their properties are understood, Q-functions…
In this paper, we consider discrete-time infinite horizon problems of optimal control to a terminal set of states. These are the problems that are often taken as the starting point for adaptive dynamic programming. Under very general…
In recent work it is shown that Q-learning with linear function approximation is stable, in the sense of bounded parameter estimates, under the $(\varepsilon,\kappa)$-tamed Gibbs policy; $\kappa$ is inverse temperature, and $\varepsilon>0$…
Greedy-GQ with linear function approximation, originally proposed in \cite{maei2010toward}, is a value-based off-policy algorithm for optimal control in reinforcement learning, and it has a non-linear two timescale structure with the…
We study policy iteration (PI) for deterministic infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problems, whose value function is characterized by a stationary Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman (HJB) equation. At the PDE level, PI is fundamentally…
We present an accelerated algorithm for the solution of static Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations related to optimal control problems. Our scheme is based on a classic policy iteration procedure, which is known to have superlinear…
We study value-iteration (VI) algorithms for solving general (a.k.a. multichain) Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the average-reward criterion, a fundamental but theoretically challenging setting. Beyond the difficulties inherent to…
We study finite-horizon continuous-time policy evaluation from discrete closed-loop trajectories under time-inhomogeneous dynamics. The target value surface solves a backward parabolic equation, but the Bellman baseline obtained from…
Solving stochastic games with the reachability objective is a fundamental problem, especially in quantitative verification and synthesis. For this purpose, bounded value iteration (BVI) attracts attention as an efficient iterative method.…
Policy iteration and value iteration are at the core of many (approximate) dynamic programming methods. For Markov Decision Processes with finite state and action spaces, we show that they are instances of semismooth Newton-type methods to…
In temporal difference (TD) learning, off-policy sampling is known to be more practical than on-policy sampling, and by decoupling learning from data collection, it enables data reuse. It is known that policy evaluation (including…