arXiv Machine Learning

$\text{DT}^2$: Decision-Targeted Digital Twins

arXiv:2606. 25923v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A digital twin (DT) is a virtual model of a real-world system that can assist decision-making by simulating scenarios induced by different policies.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Decision-Centered Abstractions via Orthogonal Estimation of Difference-of-Q Functions

The paper introduces state abstractions that preserve the difference of Q‑functions for offline reinforcement learning, aiming to exclude irrelevant dynamics from rich state data. It proposes a dynamic generalization of the R‑learner that uses orthogonal estimation and sparse learning to estimate the Q‑function contrast, achieving faster convergence and consistency under a margin condition. Experiments on simulated and simulator‑augmented real data show variance reductions and demonstrate that the necessary information for sequential decision‑making can be smaller than that required for full state prediction.

By Defu Cao, Angela Zhou
arXiv Machine Learning
5d ago

From Weak Data to Strong Policy: Q-Targets Enable Provable In-Context Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces Q-Target Pretrained Transformers (QTPT), a method that replaces supervised behavior cloning with a Bellman-style Q‑target objective for in‑context reinforcement learning. QTPT retains the context‑conditioned Transformer architecture but learns to estimate action values using rewards and transitions from the context, rather than merely imitating offline actions. The authors provide theoretical analysis in stochastic linear bandits and finite‑horizon MDPs, demonstrating improved robustness to weak or suboptimal data, and empirically show gains over supervised pretraining on controlled RL benchmarks and extensions to D4RL Kitchen and AntMaze.

By Yichen Lin, Xuyuan Xiong, Xue Wang, Xiangfu Meng, Mike Mingcheng Wei, Tao Yao
Hugging Face Trending Papers
6d ago

Q-learning Penalized Transformer for Safe Offline Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces Q-learning Penalized Transformer (QPT), a training–inference consistent framework for safe offline reinforcement learning. QPT trains a Transformer policy that generates actions conditioned on trajectory context and target return/cost while incorporating a Q-shaped penalty to balance safety, reward maximization, and behavior regularization. The method consistently outperforms strong baselines on 38 DSRL benchmark tasks and adapts robustly to varying constraint thresholds.