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 Undirected Networks


Empirical PAC-Bayes bounds for Markov chains

arXiv.org Machine Learning

The core of generalization theory was developed for independent observations. Some PAC and PAC-Bayes bounds are available for data that exhibit a temporal dependence. However, there are constants in these bounds that depend on properties of the data-generating process: mixing coefficients, mixing time, spectral gap... Such constants are unknown in practice. In this paper, we prove a new PAC-Bayes bound for Markov chains. This bound depends on a quantity called the pseudo-spectral gap. The main novelty is that we can provide an empirical bound on the pseudo-spectral gap when the state space is finite. Thus, we obtain the first fully empirical PAC-Bayes bound for Markov chains. This extends beyond the finite case, although this requires additional assumptions. On simulated experiments, the empirical version of the bound is essentially as tight as the non-empirical one.


A Theory of Multi-Agent Generative Flow Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Generative flow networks utilize a flow-matching loss to learn a stochastic policy for generating objects from a sequence of actions, such that the probability of generating a pattern can be proportional to the corresponding given reward. However, a theoretical framework for multi-agent generative flow networks (MA-GFlowNets) has not yet been proposed. In this paper, we propose the theory framework of MA-GFlowNets, which can be applied to multiple agents to generate objects collaboratively through a series of joint actions. We further propose four algorithms: a centralized flow network for centralized training of MA-GFlowNets, an independent flow network for decentralized execution, a joint flow network for achieving centralized training with decentralized execution, and its updated conditional version. Joint Flow training is based on a local-global principle allowing to train a collection of (local) GFN as a unique (global) GFN. This principle provides a loss of reasonable complexity and allows to leverage usual results on GFN to provide theoretical guarantees that the independent policies generate samples with probability proportional to the reward function. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework compared to reinforcement learning and MCMC-based methods.


DyDexHandover: Human-like Bimanual Dynamic Dexterous Handover using RGB-only Perception

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Dynamic in air handover is a fundamental challenge for dual-arm robots, requiring accurate perception, precise coordination, and natural motion. Prior methods often rely on dynamics models, strong priors, or depth sensing, limiting generalization and naturalness. We present DyDexHandover, a novel framework that employs multi-agent reinforcement learning to train an end to end RGB based policy for bimanual object throwing and catching. To achieve more human-like behavior, the throwing policy is guided by a human policy regularization scheme, encouraging fluid and natural motion, and enhancing the generalization capability of the policy. A dual arm simulation environment was built in Isaac Sim for experimental evaluation. DyDexHandover achieves nearly 99 percent success on training objects and 75 percent on unseen objects, while generating human-like throwing and catching behaviors. To our knowledge, it is the first method to realize dual-arm in-air handover using only raw RGB perception.


Model-Based Reinforcement Learning under Random Observation Delays

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Delays frequently occur in real-world environments, yet standard reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms often assume instantaneous perception of the environment. We study random sensor delays in POMDPs, where observations may arrive out-of-sequence, a setting that has not been previously addressed in RL. We analyze the structure of such delays and demonstrate that naive approaches, such as stacking past observations, are insufficient for reliable performance. To address this, we propose a model-based filtering process that sequentially updates the belief state based on an incoming stream of observations. We then introduce a simple delay-aware framework that incorporates this idea into model-based RL, enabling agents to effectively handle random delays. Applying this framework to Dreamer, we compare our approach to delay-aware baselines developed for MDPs. Our method consistently outperforms these baselines and demonstrates robustness to delay distribution shifts during deployment. Additionally, we present experiments on simulated robotic tasks, comparing our method to common practical heuristics and emphasizing the importance of explicitly modeling observation delays.


RobotDancing: Residual-Action Reinforcement Learning Enables Robust Long-Horizon Humanoid Motion Tracking

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Abstract-- Long-horizon, high-dynamic motion tracking on humanoids remains brittle because absolute joint commands cannot compensate model-plant mismatch, leading to error accumulation. We propose RobotDancing, a simple, scalable framework that predicts residual joint targets to explicitly correct dynamics discrepancies. The pipeline is end-to-end--training, sim-to-sim validation, and zero-shot sim-to-real--and uses a single-stage reinforcement learning (RL) setup with a unified observation, reward, and hyperparameter configuration. RobotDancing can track multi-minute, high-energy behaviors (jumps, spins, cartwheels) and deploys zero-shot to hardware with high motion tracking quality. I. INTRODUCTION Humanoid robots are increasingly expected to execute long-horizon, highly dynamic behaviors such as dance, where small tracking errors compound rapidly and destabilize control. A principal source of such drift is the mismatch between idealized reference trajectories and the robot's true physics (actuation limits, friction, inertia, latency).





Adaptive Event-Triggered Policy Gradient for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Conventional multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods rely on time-triggered execution, where agents sample and communicate actions at fixed intervals. This approach is often computationally expensive and communication-intensive. To address this limitation, we propose ET-MAPG (Event-Triggered Multi-Agent Policy Gradient reinforcement learning), a framework that jointly learns an agent's control policy and its event-triggering policy. Unlike prior work that decouples these mechanisms, ET-MAPG integrates them into a unified learning process, enabling agents to learn not only what action to take but also when to execute it. For scenarios with inter-agent communication, we introduce AET-MAPG, an attention-based variant that leverages a self-attention mechanism to learn selective communication patterns. AET-MAPG empowers agents to determine not only when to trigger an action but also with whom to communicate and what information to exchange, thereby optimizing coordination. Both methods can be integrated with any policy gradient MARL algorithm. Extensive experiments across diverse MARL benchmarks demonstrate that our approaches achieve performance comparable to state-of-the-art, time-triggered baselines while significantly reducing both computational load and communication overhead.


Uncertainty-aware Latent Safety Filters for Avoiding Out-of-Distribution Failures

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Recent advances in generative world models have enabled classical safe control methods, such as Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) reachability, to generalize to complex robotic systems operating directly from high-dimensional sensor observations. However, obtaining comprehensive coverage of all safety-critical scenarios during world model training is extremely challenging. As a result, latent safety filters built on top of these models may miss novel hazards and even fail to prevent known ones, overconfidently misclassifying risky out-of-distribution (OOD) situations as safe. To address this, we introduce an uncertainty-aware latent safety filter that proactively steers robots away from both known and unseen failures. Our key idea is to use the world model's epistemic uncertainty as a proxy for identifying unseen potential hazards. We propose a principled method to detect OOD world model predictions by calibrating an uncertainty threshold via conformal prediction. By performing reachability analysis in an augmented state space-spanning both the latent representation and the epistemic uncertainty-we synthesize a latent safety filter that can reliably safeguard arbitrary policies from both known and unseen safety hazards. In simulation and hardware experiments on vision-based control tasks with a Franka manipulator, we show that our uncertainty-aware safety filter preemptively detects potential unsafe scenarios and reliably proposes safe, in-distribution actions. Video results can be found on the project website at https://cmu-intentlab.github.io/UNISafe