Sublinear Regret for a Class of Continuous-Time Linear-Quadratic Reinforcement Learning Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Huang, Yilie, Jia, Yanwei, Zhou, Xun Yu
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Huang, Yilie
Jia, Yanwei
Zhou, Xun Yu
author_facet Huang, Yilie
Jia, Yanwei
Zhou, Xun Yu
contents We study reinforcement learning (RL) for a class of continuous-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control problems for diffusions, where states are scalar-valued and running control rewards are absent but volatilities of the state processes depend on both state and control variables. We apply a model-free approach that relies neither on knowledge of model parameters nor on their estimations, and devise an RL algorithm to learn the optimal policy parameter directly. Our main contributions include the introduction of an exploration schedule and a regret analysis of the proposed algorithm. We provide the convergence rate of the policy parameter to the optimal one, and prove that the algorithm achieves a regret bound of $O(N^{\frac{3}{4}})$ up to a logarithmic factor, where $N$ is the number of learning episodes. We conduct a simulation study to validate the theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed algorithm. We also perform numerical comparisons between our method and those of the recent model-based stochastic LQ RL studies adapted to the state- and control-dependent volatility setting, demonstrating a better performance of the former in terms of regret bounds.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_17226
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sublinear Regret for a Class of Continuous-Time Linear-Quadratic Reinforcement Learning Problems
Huang, Yilie
Jia, Yanwei
Zhou, Xun Yu
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
We study reinforcement learning (RL) for a class of continuous-time linear-quadratic (LQ) control problems for diffusions, where states are scalar-valued and running control rewards are absent but volatilities of the state processes depend on both state and control variables. We apply a model-free approach that relies neither on knowledge of model parameters nor on their estimations, and devise an RL algorithm to learn the optimal policy parameter directly. Our main contributions include the introduction of an exploration schedule and a regret analysis of the proposed algorithm. We provide the convergence rate of the policy parameter to the optimal one, and prove that the algorithm achieves a regret bound of $O(N^{\frac{3}{4}})$ up to a logarithmic factor, where $N$ is the number of learning episodes. We conduct a simulation study to validate the theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed algorithm. We also perform numerical comparisons between our method and those of the recent model-based stochastic LQ RL studies adapted to the state- and control-dependent volatility setting, demonstrating a better performance of the former in terms of regret bounds.
title Sublinear Regret for a Class of Continuous-Time Linear-Quadratic Reinforcement Learning Problems
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17226