Related papers: Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning with the MAXQ …
The goal of reinforcement learning is estimating a policy that maps states to actions and maximizes the cumulative reward of a Markov Decision Process (MDP). This is oftentimes achieved by estimating first the optimal (reward) value…
Value function based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, for example, $Q$-learning, learn optimal policies from datasets of actions, rewards, and state transitions. However, when the underlying state transition dynamics are stochastic…
Hierarchical reinforcement learning methods offer a powerful means of planning flexible behavior in complicated domains. However, learning an appropriate hierarchical decomposition of a domain into subtasks remains a substantial challenge.…
We revisit the reduction of learning in adversarial Markov decision processes [MDPs] to adversarial learning based on $Q$--values; this reduction has been considered in a number of recent articles as one building block to perform policy…
The robust $\phi$-regularized Markov Decision Process (RRMDP) framework focuses on designing control policies that are robust against parameter uncertainties due to mismatches between the simulator (nominal) model and real-world settings.…
In Markov decision processes (MDPs), quantile risk measures such as Value-at-Risk are a standard metric for modeling RL agents' preferences for certain outcomes. This paper proposes a new Q-learning algorithm for quantile optimization in…
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms combined with value function approximation have recently achieved impressive performance in a variety of application domains. However, the theoretical understanding of such algorithms is limited,…
We consider online reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the linear $q^\pi$-realizability assumption, where it is assumed that the action-values of all policies can be expressed as linear functions…
As representation learning becomes a powerful technique to reduce sample complexity in reinforcement learning (RL) in practice, theoretical understanding of its advantage is still limited. In this paper, we theoretically characterize the…
Reinforcement learning can train policies that effectively perform complex tasks. However for long-horizon tasks, the performance of these methods degrades with horizon, often necessitating reasoning over and chaining lower-level skills.…
Reinforcement learning (RL) on high-dimensional and complex problems relies on abstraction for improved efficiency and generalization. In this paper, we study abstraction in the continuous-control setting, and extend the definition of…
In this paper, we consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with error states. Error states are those states entering which is undesirable or dangerous. We define the risk with respect to a policy as the probability of entering such a state…
Decision-making in complex, continuous multi-task environments is often hindered by the difficulty of obtaining accurate models for planning and the inefficiency of learning purely from trial and error. While precise environment dynamics…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a classical tool to solve network control or policy optimization problems in unknown environments. The original Q-learning suffers from performance and complexity challenges across very large networks. Herein,…
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…
This work proposes an approach that integrates reinforcement learning and model predictive control (MPC) to solve finite-horizon optimal control problems in mixed-logical dynamical systems efficiently. Optimization-based control of such…
Learning a near optimal policy in a partially observable system remains an elusive challenge in contemporary reinforcement learning. In this work, we consider episodic reinforcement learning in a reward-mixing Markov decision process (MDP).…
Reinforcementlearning(RL)folkloresuggeststhathistory-basedfunctionapproximationmethods,suchas recurrent neural nets or history-based state abstraction, perform better than their memory-less counterparts, due to the fact that function…
In decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning, agents learning in isolation can lead to relative over-generalization (RO), where optimal joint actions are undervalued in favor of suboptimal ones. This hinders effective coordination in…
Reinforcement learning algorithms are typically designed for generic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where any state-action pair can lead to an arbitrary transition distribution. In many practical systems, however, only a subset of the…