Q-learning with nearest neighbors

© 2018 Curran Associates Inc.All rights reserved. We consider model-free reinforcement learning for infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a continuous state space and unknown transition kernel, when only a single sample path under an arbitrary policy of the system is avai...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shah, Devavrat (Author), Xie, Qiaomin (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2021-11-09T16:08:56Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
LEADER 01479 am a22001453u 4500
001 137946
042 |a dc 
100 1 0 |a Shah, Devavrat  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Xie, Qiaomin  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Q-learning with nearest neighbors 
260 |c 2021-11-09T16:08:56Z. 
856 |z Get fulltext  |u https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/137946 
520 |a © 2018 Curran Associates Inc.All rights reserved. We consider model-free reinforcement learning for infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a continuous state space and unknown transition kernel, when only a single sample path under an arbitrary policy of the system is available. We consider the Nearest Neighbor Q-Learning (NNQL) algorithm to learn the optimal Q function using nearest neighbor regression method. As the main contribution, we provide tight finite sample analysis of the convergence rate. In particular, for MDPs with a d-dimensional state space and the discounted factor γ ∈ (0, 1), given an arbitrary sample path with "covering time" L, we establish that the algorithm is guaranteed to output an ε-accurate estimate of the optimal Q-function using Õ e (L/(ε 3 (1 - γ) 7 )) samples. For instance, for a well-behaved MDP, the covering time of the sample path under the purely random policy scales as Õ e (1/ε d ), so the sample complexity scales as Õ e (1/ε d+3 ). Indeed, we establish a lower bound that argues that the dependence of Ω e (1/ε d+2 ) is necessary. 
546 |a en 
655 7 |a Article