Policy Learning

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Overview

Policy learning studies how to choose actions or interventions over time to improve rewards, welfare, or other goals, often when outcomes are uncertain or feedback is limited. Common approaches include policy-gradient and actor–critic reinforcement learning, value-based and offline learning, imitation from demonstrations, and direct learning of treatment or resource-allocation rules. Current work also tackles long-horizon language-model agents and generative robot policies, using methods such as finer-grained credit assignment, exploration, memory, and policy reuse. A central tension is achieving reliable, safe learning with theoretical guarantees while using expressive policies and imperfect data or rewards efficiently.

Latest papers

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488 papers74 papers in the last four weeks, up 48% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

  1. Mean Flow Policy Optimization

    Apr 16, 2026Xiaoyi Dong, Xi Sheryl Zhang, Jian ChengMeanFlowMean Flow

    C2DL, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · AiRiA +1

  2. When Missing Becomes Structure: Intent-Preserving Policy Completion from Financial KOL Discourse

    Apr 15, 2026Yuncong Liu, Yuan Wan, Zhou Jiang +1Algorithmic TradingPolicy Learning

    Asian Institute of Digital Finance, National University of Singapore · School of Computing, National University of Singapore

  3. HiPolicy: Hierarchical Multi-Frequency Action Chunking for Policy Learning

    Apr 7, 2026Jiyao Zhang, Zimu Han, Junhan Wang +7Policy LearningAction Chunking

    CFCS, School of CS, PKU · National Key Laboratory for Multimedia Information Processing, School of CS, PKU · XJTU +3

  4. MC-CPO: Mastery-Conditioned Constrained Policy Optimization for Pedagogically Safe Intelligent Tutoring Systems

    Apr 5, 2026Oluseyi Olukola, Nick RahimiIntelligent Tutoring SystemsPolicy Learning

    School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg MS 39406 USA

  5. Model-Based Learning of Near-Optimal Finite-Window Policies in POMDPs

    Apr 1, 2026Philip Jordan, Maryam KamgarpourPartially Observable Markov Decision ProcessesPolicy Learning

    SYCAMORE group, Institute of Mechanical Engineering, EPFL Switzerland.

  6. Policy Improvement Reinforcement Learning

    Apr 1, 2026Huaiyang Wang, Xiaojie Li, Xiaohan Wang +10RL for Language ModelsRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Beihang University · Meituan · Peking University

  7. Multi-Agent LLMs for Adaptive Acquisition in Bayesian Optimization

    Mar 30, 2026Mohammadsina Almasi, Andrea Carbonati, Hadis AnahidehLarge Language Model-Guided OptimizationExploration-Exploitation Tradeoff

    University of Illinois Chicago, IL, USA

  8. Functional Natural Policy Gradients

    Mar 30, 2026Aurelien Bibaut, Houssam Zenati, Thibaud Rahier +1Cross-FittingNatural Policy Gradient

  9. Optimistic Actor-Critic with Parametric Policies for Linear Markov Decision Processes

    Mar 30, 2026Max Qiushi Lin, Reza Asad, Kevin Tan +3Actor-Critic MethodsPolicy Learning

    Simon Fraser University · University of Pennsylvania · Mila, McGill University +1

  10. Towards Safe Learning-Based Non-Linear Model Predictive Control through Recurrent Neural Network Modeling

    Mar 25, 2026Mihaela-Larisa Clement, Mónika Farsang, Agnes Poks +4Nonlinear MPCModel Predictive Control

    Institute of Computer Engineering, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria · AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna, Austria · Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

  11. End-to-End Efficient RL for Linear Bellman Complete MDPs with Deterministic Transitions

    Mar 24, 2026Zakaria Mhammedi, Alexander Rakhlin, Nneka OkoloReinforcement LearningLinear Markov Decision Processes

    Google Research, NYC · MIT

  12. Delightful Distributed Policy Gradient

    Mar 20, 2026Ian OsbandPolicy Gradient MethodsPolicy Learning

    Google DeepMind

  13. Investigating a Policy-Based Formulation for Endoscopic Camera Pose Recovery

    Mar 20, 2026Jan Emily Mangulabnan, Akshat Chauhan, Laura Fleig +7Camera Pose EstimationVisual Odometry

    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD 21218, USA · Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore MD 21218, USA

  14. DeepStock: Reinforcement Learning with Policy Regularizations for Inventory Management

    Mar 20, 2026Yaqi Xie, Xinru Hao, Jiaxi Liu +4Inventory ControlReinforcement Learning

    Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA. · Taobao & Tmall Group, Hangzhou, China. · School of Economics, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. +2

  15. Near-Equivalent Q-learning Policies for Dynamic Treatment Regimes

    Mar 19, 2026Sophia Yazzourh, Erica E. M. MoodieQ-LearningPolicy Learning

    Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics McGill University Montréal, Québec, Canada

  16. Generalizable Optimal Control with Transformers: One Policy Across Diverse Systems

    Mar 16, 2026Turki Bin Mohaya, Maitham F. AL-Sunni, John M. Dolan +1Optimal ControlNeural Network Control

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

  17. From Prior to Pro: Efficient Skill Mastery via Distribution Contractive RL Finetuning

    Mar 10, 2026Zhanyi Sun, Shuran SongRL for RoboticsRobot Policy Learning

    1Stanford University.

  18. Actor-Accelerated Policy Dual Averaging for Reinforcement Learning in Continuous Action Spaces

    Mar 10, 2026Ji Gao, Caleb Ju, Guanghui Lan +1Reinforcement LearningPolicy Optimization

    School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, USA. · H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, USA. · H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, USA

  19. Vector Field Augmented Differentiable Policy Learning for Vision-Based Drone Racing

    Mar 9, 2026Yang Su, Feng Yu, Yu Hu +4Autonomous Drone RacingPolicy Learning

    The authors are with the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

  20. EnergyAction: Unimanual to Bimanual Composition with Energy-Based Models

    Mar 9, 2026Mingchen Song, Xiang Deng, Jie Wei +3Bimanual Robotic ManipulationPolicy Learning

    Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) · PengCheng Laboratory · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute

  21. Reinforcing the World's Edge: A Continual Learning Problem in the Multi-Agent-World Boundary

    Mar 6, 2026Dane MalenfantNon-Stationary RLDecentralized MARL

    School of Computer Science McGill University Mila - The Québec AI Institute

  22. Learning Optimal Individualized Decision Rules with Conditional Demographic Parity

    Mar 5, 2026Wenhai Cui, Wen Su, Donglin Zeng +1Algorithmic FairnessPolicy Learning

    Department of Applied Mathematics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Department of Biostatistics, City University of Hong Kong · Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan

  23. RAPO: Expanding Exploration for LLM Agents via Retrieval-Augmented Policy Optimization

    Mar 3, 2026Siwei Zhang, Yun Xiong, Xi Chen +4Agentic RLRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Fudan University · Zhejiang University · UC Davis

  24. Temporal Consistency Improves Generalization in Contextual Offline Meta Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 3, 2026Mohammadreza Nakheai, Aidan Scannell, Kevin Luck +1Representation LearningOffline RL

    Aalto University · Toyota Research Institute · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  25. LLMs for High-Frequency Decision-Making: Normalized Action Reward-Guided Consistency Policy Optimization

    Mar 3, 2026Yang Zhao, Zihao Li, Zhiyu Jiang +3Policy LearningLLM-Guided RL

    School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

  26. Learning Therapist Policy from Therapist-Exoskeleton-Patient Interaction

    Mar 2, 2026Grayson Snyder, Lorenzo Vianello, Levi Hargrove +2Assistive RoboticsHuman-Robot Interaction

    Center for Robotics and Biosystems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. · Legs and Walking Lab, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Chicago, IL, USA.

  27. Evaluating GFlowNet from partial episodes for stable and flexible policy-based training

    Mar 1, 2026Puhua Niu, Shili Wu, Xiaoning QianGenerative Flow NetworksFlow-Based Policy Learning

    Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA · Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA

  28. Pessimistic Auxiliary Policy for Offline Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 27, 2026Fan Zhang, Baoru Huang, Xin ZhangOffline RLPolicy Learning

    Department of Mathematics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China. · University of Liverpool, UK · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.

  29. General Bayesian Policy Learning

    Feb 27, 2026Masahiro KatoGeneralized Bayesian InferencePolicy Learning

    1Mizuho-DL Financial Technology Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan

  30. Multi-agent imitation learning with function approximation: Linear Markov games and beyond

    Feb 26, 2026Luca Viano, Till Freihaut, Emanuele Nevali +3Game TheoryImitation Learning

    1EPFL · University of Zurich · 3Earth Species Project