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Reinforcement learning methods typically use Deep Neural Networks to approximate the value functions and policies underlying a Markov Decision Process. Unfortunately, DNN-based RL suffers from a lack of explainability of the resulting…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-05-19 Shambhuraj Sawant , Sebastien Gros

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

Popular Maximum Entropy Inverse Reinforcement Learning approaches require the computation of expected state visitation frequencies for the optimal policy under an estimate of the reward function. This usually requires intermediate value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-05 Gabriel Kalweit , Maria Huegle , Moritz Werling , Joschka Boedecker

The curse of dimensionality is a widely known issue in reinforcement learning (RL). In the tabular setting where the state space $\mathcal{S}$ and the action space $\mathcal{A}$ are both finite, to obtain a nearly optimal policy with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Bingyan Wang , Yuling Yan , Jianqing Fan

Designing sample-efficient and computationally feasible reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms is particularly challenging in environments with large or infinite state and action spaces. In this paper, we advance this effort by presenting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Zakaria Mhammedi

The objective in this paper is to obtain fast converging reinforcement learning algorithms to approximate solutions to the problem of discounted cost optimal stopping in an irreducible, uniformly ergodic Markov chain, evolving on a compact…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-10-01 Shuhang Chen , Adithya M. Devraj , Ana Bušić , Sean P. Meyn

In this paper, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approach to the Lyapunov optimization is considered to minimize the time-average penalty while maintaining queue stability. A proper construction of state and action spaces is…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2020-12-16 Sohee Bae , Seungyul Han , Youngchul Sung

This paper develops a quantized Q-learning algorithm for the optimal control of controlled diffusion processes on $\mathbb{R}^d$ under both discounted and ergodic (average) cost criteria. We first establish near-optimality of finite-state…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-16 Erhan Bayraktar , Ali D. Kara , Somnath Pradhan , Serdar Yuksel

Reinforcement learning has traditionally been studied with exponential discounting or the average reward setup, mainly due to their mathematical tractability. However, such frameworks fall short of accurately capturing human behavior, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-18 S. R. Eshwar , Mayank Motwani , Nibedita Roy , Gugan Thoppe

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-18 K J Prabuchandran , Tejas Bodas , Theja Tulabandhula

This paper aims to establish an entropy-regularized value-based reinforcement learning method that can ensure the monotonic improvement of policies at each policy update. Unlike previously proposed lower-bounds on policy improvement in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-26 Lingwei Zhu , Takamitsu Matsubara

Reinforcement Learning (RL) serves as a versatile framework for sequential decision-making, finding applications across diverse domains such as robotics, autonomous driving, recommendation systems, supply chain optimization, biology,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-26 Vaneet Aggarwal , Washim Uddin Mondal , Qinbo Bai

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

In this paper, we focus on the problem of robustifying reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with respect to model uncertainties. Indeed, in the framework of model-based RL, we propose to merge the theory of constrained Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Reazul Hasan Russel , Mouhacine Benosman , Jeroen Van Baar

Since the 1990s, considerable empirical work has been carried out to train statistical models, such as neural networks (NNs), as learned heuristics for combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. When successful, such an approach eliminates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-21 Orit Davidovich , Shimrit Shtern , Segev Wasserkrug , Nimrod Megiddo

We study the problem of infinite-horizon average-reward reinforcement learning with linear Markov decision processes (MDPs). The associated Bellman operator of the problem not being a contraction makes the algorithm design challenging.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-12 Kihyuk Hong , Woojin Chae , Yufan Zhang , Dabeen Lee , Ambuj Tewari

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as an efficient method of choice for solving complex sequential decision making problems in automatic control, computer science, economics, and biology. In this paper we present a model-free RL…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-09-13 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Yiannis Kantaros , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening , George J. Pappas , Insup Lee

We consider the reinforcement learning (RL) problem with general utilities which consists in maximizing a function of the state-action occupancy measure. Beyond the standard cumulative reward RL setting, this problem includes as particular…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Anas Barakat , Ilyas Fatkhullin , Niao He

This study investigates the mean-variance (MV) trade-off in reinforcement learning (RL), an instance of the sequential decision-making under uncertainty. Our objective is to obtain MV-efficient policies whose means and variances are located…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-14 Masahiro Kato , Kei Nakagawa , Kenshi Abe , Tetsuro Morimura , Kentaro Baba

We study offline reinforcement learning (RL) with linear MDPs under the infinite-horizon discounted setting which aims to learn a policy that maximizes the expected discounted cumulative reward using a pre-collected dataset. Existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-04 Kihyuk Hong , Ambuj Tewari