Finite Horizon Q-learning: Stability, Convergence, Simulations and an application on Smart Grids

Abstract: Q-learning is a popular reinforcement learning algorithm. This algorithm has however been studied and analysed mainly in the infinite horizon setting. There are several important applications which can be modeled in the framework of finite horizon Markov decision processes. We develop a version of Q-learning algorithm for finite horizon Markov decision processes (MDP) and provide a full proof of its stability and convergence. Our analysis of stability and convergence of finite horizon Q-learning is based entirely on the ordinary differential equations (O.D.E) method. We also demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on a setting of random MDP as well as on an application on smart grids.