An analysis of reinforcement learning with function approximation

Abstract

We address the problem of computing the optimal Q-function in Markov decision problems with infinite state-space. We analyze the convergence properties of several variations of Q-learning when combined with function approximation, extending the analysis of TD-learning in (Tsitsiklis & Van Roy, 1996a) to stochastic control settings. We identify conditions under which such approximate methods converge with probability 1. We conclude with a brief discussion on the general applicability of our results and compare them with several related works.