The paper introduces CURB, a reward‑shaping framework that penalizes the total variation distance between an agent’s action distributions under cooperation and defection histories, thereby preventing collusive equilibria in repeated games. By linking empirical Q‑learning collusion to Simple Penal Codes, the authors prove that any non‑trivial SPC can be neutralized, and demonstrate CURB’s effectiveness in both tabular and deep Q‑learning settings for Bertrand and Cournot competition.
By Karthik Sivachandran, Rohan Paleja
arXiv:2608. 07228v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When a reinforcement learning agent cannot observe the full state, we usually blame its policies: it cannot see enough to represent a good one.
By Idil G\"ozel (University College London)
arXiv:2605. 29032v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) agents typically learn world models by minimizing predictive loss.
By Christoph Dann, Yishay Mansour, Mehryar Mohri
arXiv:2410.14606v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Learning from a stream of experience as it arrives, also known as streaming learning, is a core part of natural learning. However, reliable streami...
By Mohamed Elsayed, Elena Sorina Lupu, Gautham Vasan, A. Rupam Mahmood
arXiv:2606. 10129v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While deep Reinforcement Learning (deep-RL) has been increasingly applied to parameter control in evolutionary algorithms, rigorous theoretical analysis of parameter control remains largely restricted to single-parameter settings, owing to the difficulty of deriving effective, interpretable multi-parameter policies amenable to formal study.
By Tai Nguyen, Phong Le, Carola Doerr, Nguyen Dang
The paper introduces BUMEX, a reinforcement learning exploration strategy that leverages a set of prior models containing the true transition kernel and reward function. By optimizing over this model set, the method derives upper and lower bounds on the Q‑function to guide exploration, providing theoretical guarantees of convergence to the optimal policy. When the model set follows a bounded‑parameter MDP structure, the optimization becomes convex, enabling finite‑time convergence under mild assumptions and demonstrating accelerated learning in simulations.
By J. S. van Hulst, W. P. M. H. Heemels, D. J. Antunes
arXiv:2610.17062v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: We propose a mitigation to reward hacking in reinforcement learning. Our setup involves a misspecified reward function that gives rise to unintended...
By Jake Ward, Shawn Hu, Aria Wong, Nathan Hu, Bryce Woodworth, Alexander Matt Turner, Alex Cloud
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
arXiv:2606. 11087v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Expressive continuous control policies, such as diffusion and flow models, form the backbone of recent advances in scaling imitation learning for simulated and real robot control.
By Zhiyuan Zhou, Andy Peng, Charles Xu, Qiyang Li, Tobias Springenberg, Kevin Frans, Sergey Levine
arXiv:2607. 07435v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agents acting on our behalf in the real world (e.
By Bojie Li, Noah Shi
arXiv:2610.07910v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Deep Reinforcement Learning policies can produce nonsmooth action oscillations that hinder deployment on physical robots. Existing architectural and pe...
By SungJae Ahn, Jeong Woon Lee, Kyoleen Kwak, Hyoseok Hwang
arXiv:2606. 08610v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a powerful paradigm for robot learning, particularly in sim-to-real settings, but its broader adoption remains limited by the engineering pipeline surrounding the algorithms.
By Zechu Li, Yufeng Jin, Xiaoyang Liu, Puze Liu, Vignesh Prasad, Carlo D'Eramo, Georgia Chalvatzaki