English

Provably Efficient Exploration in Constrained Reinforcement Learning:Posterior Sampling Is All You Need

Machine Learning 2023-09-28 v1

Abstract

We present a new algorithm based on posterior sampling for learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDP) in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. The algorithm achieves near-optimal regret bounds while being advantageous empirically compared to the existing algorithms. Our main theoretical result is a Bayesian regret bound for each cost component of \tilde{O} (HS \sqrt{AT}) for any communicating CMDP with S states, A actions, and bound on the hitting time H. This regret bound matches the lower bound in order of time horizon T and is the best-known regret bound for communicating CMDPs in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. Empirical results show that, despite its simplicity, our posterior sampling algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms for constrained reinforcement learning.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.15737,
  title  = {Provably Efficient Exploration in Constrained Reinforcement Learning:Posterior Sampling Is All You Need},
  author = {Danil Provodin and Pratik Gajane and Mykola Pechenizkiy and Maurits Kaptein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.15737},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:33:53.379Z