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We propose expected policy gradients (EPG), which unify stochastic policy gradients (SPG) and deterministic policy gradients (DPG) for reinforcement learning. Inspired by expected sarsa, EPG integrates across the action when estimating the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-17 Kamil Ciosek , Shimon Whiteson

Motivated by many application problems, we consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a general loss function and unknown parameters. To mitigate the epistemic uncertainty associated with unknown parameters, we take a Bayesian approach…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Xiaoshuang Wang , Yifan Lin , Enlu Zhou

Reinforcement learning provides a mathematical framework for learning-based control, whose success largely depends on the amount of data it can utilize. The efficient utilization of historical trajectories obtained from previous policies is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Yifan Lin , Yuhao Wang , Enlu Zhou

We propose a novel policy gradient method for multi-agent reinforcement learning, which leverages two different variance-reduction techniques and does not require large batches over iterations. Specifically, we propose a momentum-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-07 Zhanhong Jiang , Xian Yeow Lee , Sin Yong Tan , Kai Liang Tan , Aditya Balu , Young M. Lee , Chinmay Hegde , Soumik Sarkar

We propose policy gradient algorithms for solving a risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) problem in on-policy as well as off-policy settings. We consider episodic Markov decision processes, and model the risk using the broad class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Nithia Vijayan , Prashanth L. A

Policy gradient methods are a widely used class of model-free reinforcement learning algorithms where a state-dependent baseline is used to reduce gradient estimator variance. Several recent papers extend the baseline to depend on both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-20 George Tucker , Surya Bhupatiraju , Shixiang Gu , Richard E. Turner , Zoubin Ghahramani , Sergey Levine

This paper develops a policy gradient method for entropy-regularized mean-field control in the discounted infinite-horizon setting. We consider randomized feedback policies and a coupled representative-particle/population system, in which…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-21 Erhan Bayraktar , Martin Hernandez , Qinxin Yan , Yuhua Zhu

We propose a comprehensive framework for policy gradient methods tailored to continuous time reinforcement learning. This is based on the connection between stochastic control problems and randomised problems, enabling applications across…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-01 Robert Denkert , Huyên Pham , Xavier Warin

We consider the estimation of the policy gradient in partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) with a special class of structured policies that are finite-state controllers. We show that the gradient estimation can be done in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Huizhen Yu

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

In Reinforcement Learning, the optimal action at a given state is dependent on policy decisions at subsequent states. As a consequence, the learning targets evolve with time and the policy optimization process must be efficient at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-16 Romain Laroche , Remi Tachet

We present on-line policy gradient algorithms for computing the locally optimal policy of a constrained, average cost, finite state Markov Decision Process. The stochastic approximation algorithms require estimation of the gradient of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-12-18 Vikram Krishnamurthy , Felisa Vazquez Abad

In learning from demonstrations, many generative models of trajectories make simplifying assumptions of independence. Correctness is sacrificed in the name of tractability and speed of the learning phase. The ignored dependencies, which…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-11-09 Emmanuel Pignat , Hakan Girgin , Sylvain Calinon

We consider the inverse reinforcement learning problem, that is, the problem of learning from, and then predicting or mimicking a controller based on state/action data. We propose a statistical model for such data, derived from the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-11-27 Sumeetpal S. Singh , Nicolas Chopin , Nick Whiteley

Policy gradient (PG) is a reinforcement learning (RL) approach that optimizes a parameterized policy model for an expected return using gradient ascent. While PG can work well even in non-Markovian environments, it may encounter plateaus or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-08 Tetsuro Morimura , Kazuhiro Ota , Kenshi Abe , Peinan Zhang

Actor-critic (AC) methods are widely used in reinforcement learning (RL) and benefit from the flexibility of using any policy gradient method as the actor and value-based method as the critic. The critic is usually trained by minimizing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Sharan Vaswani , Amirreza Kazemi , Reza Babanezhad , Nicolas Le Roux

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

The multidimensional Uncertain Volatility Model leads to robust option pricing problems under joint volatility and correlation uncertainty. Their numerical resolution quickly becomes challenging because the associated stochastic control…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2026-05-11 Lokman A Abbas-Turki , Jean-François Chassagneux , Jean-Philippe Lemor , Grégoire Loeper , Simon Sananes

Continuous-time Markov decision processes are an important class of models in a wide range of applications, ranging from cyber-physical systems to synthetic biology. A central problem is how to devise a policy to control the system in order…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2016-06-01 Ezio Bartocci , Luca Bortolussi , Tomǎš Brázdil , Dimitrios Milios , Guido Sanguinetti

We study the use of policy gradient algorithms to optimize over a class of generalized Thompson sampling policies. Our central insight is to view the posterior parameter sampled by Thompson sampling as a kind of pseudo-action. Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-01 Seungki Min , Ciamac C. Moallemi , Daniel J. Russo