Papers › Learning to Control in Metric Space with Optimal Regret

Learning to Control in Metric Space with Optimal Regret

5 May 2019arXiv:1905.01576archive 2025-07-28

Lin F. Yang, Chengzhuo Ni, Mengdi Wang

We study online reinforcement learning for finite-horizon deterministic control systems with {\it arbitrary} state and action spaces. Suppose that the transition dynamics and reward function is unknown, but the state and action space is endowed with a metric that characterizes the proximity between different states and actions. We provide a surprisingly simple upper-confidence reinforcement learning algorithm that uses a function approximation oracle to estimate optimistic Q functions from experiences. We show that the regret of the algorithm after K episodes is O(HL(KH)^((d-1)/d)) where L is a smoothness parameter, and d is the doubling dimension of the state-action space with respect to the given metric. We also establish a near-matching regret lower bound. The proposed method can be adapted to work for more structured transition systems, including the finite-state case and the case where value functions are linear combinations of features, where the method also achieve the optimal regret.

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Reinforcement LearningReinforcement Learning (RL)reinforcement-learning

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