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Related papers: Exponential Lower Bounds For Policy Iteration

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Option-critic learning is a general-purpose reinforcement learning (RL) framework that aims to address the issue of long term credit assignment by leveraging temporal abstractions. However, when dealing with extended timescales, discounting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-21 Akshay Dharmavaram , Matthew Riemer , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Safety is an essential requirement for reinforcement learning systems. The newly emerging framework of robust constrained Markov decision processes allows learning policies that satisfy long-term constraints while providing guarantees under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-19 David M. Bossens , Atsushi Nitanda

We propose a novel randomized linear programming algorithm for approximating the optimal policy of the discounted Markov decision problem. By leveraging the value-policy duality and binary-tree data structures, the algorithm adaptively…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-04 Mengdi Wang

We provide a new algorithm for solving Risk Sensitive Partially Observable Markov Decisions Processes, when the risk is modeled by a utility function, and both the state space and the space of observations is finite. This algorithm is based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-19 Arsham Afsardeir , Andreas Kapetanis , Vaios Laschos , Klaus Obermayer

We present two Policy Gradient-based algorithms with general parametrization in the context of infinite-horizon average reward Markov Decision Process (MDP). The first one employs Implicit Gradient Transport for variance reduction, ensuring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Swetha Ganesh , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on Policy Search algorithms, that compute an approximately optimal policy by following the standard Policy Iteration (PI)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-06-04 Bruno Scherrer

We study the computational complexity of approximating general constrained Markov decision processes. Our primary contribution is the design of a polynomial time $(0,\epsilon)$-additive bicriteria approximation algorithm for finding optimal…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Jeremy McMahan

We propose a formulation of the stochastic cutting stock problem as a discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision process. At each decision epoch, given current inventory of items, an agent chooses in which patterns to cut objects in stock…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-29 Anselmo R. Pitombeira-Neto , Arthur H. Fonseca Murta

Canonical models of Markov decision processes (MDPs) usually consider geometric discounting based on a constant discount factor. While this standard modeling approach has led to many elegant results, some recent studies indicate the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Jiarui Gan , Annika Hennes , Rupak Majumdar , Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

We consider the problem of computing the value and an optimal strategy for minimizing the expected termination time in one-counter Markov decision processes. Since the value may be irrational and an optimal strategy may be rather…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2012-05-08 Tomáš Brázdil , Antonín Kučera , Petr Novotný , Dominik Wojtczak

Strategy iteration is a technique frequently used for two-player games in order to determine the winner or compute payoffs, but to the best of our knowledge no general framework for strategy iteration has been considered. Inspired by…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-12-14 Paolo Baldan , Richard Eggert , Barbara König , Tommaso Padoan

We examine online safe multi-agent reinforcement learning using constrained Markov games in which agents compete by maximizing their expected total rewards under a constraint on expected total utilities. Our focus is confined to an episodic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Dongsheng Ding , Xiaohan Wei , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Mihailo R. Jovanović

We consider approximate dynamic programming for the infinite-horizon stationary $\gamma$-discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. While in the exact case it is known that there always exists an optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-04-23 Boris Lesner , Bruno Scherrer

We propose a policy iteration method to solve an inverse problem for a mean-field game (MFG) model, specifically to reconstruct the obstacle function in the game from the partial observation data of value functions, which represent the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-12 Kui Ren , Nathan Soedjak , Shanyin Tong

Policy gradient methods enjoy strong practical performance in numerous tasks in reinforcement learning. Their theoretical understanding in multiagent settings, however, remains limited, especially beyond two-player competitive and potential…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Ioannis Anagnostides , Ioannis Panageas , Gabriele Farina , Tuomas Sandholm

We consider an agent who is involved in a Markov decision process and receives a vector of outcomes every round. Her objective is to maximize a global concave reward function on the average vectorial outcome. The problem models applications…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-17 Wang Chi Cheung

Markov Potential Games (MPGs) form an important sub-class of Markov games, which are a common framework to model multi-agent reinforcement learning problems. In particular, MPGs include as a special case the identical-interest setting where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-16 Pragnya Alatur , Anas Barakat , Niao He

Originating in evolutionary game theory, the class of "zero-determinant" strategies enables a player to unilaterally enforce linear payoff relationships in simple repeated games. An upshot of this kind of payoff constraint is that it can…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-26 Nikos Dimou , Alex McAvoy

We study a class of infinite-horizon average-cost Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) whose reward and transition structures are nearly separable. For the totally separable baseline (that is, with no perturbation), we derive an explicit…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-28 Dhairya Kantawala

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are standard models for dynamic systems with probabilistic and nondeterministic behaviour in uncertain environments. We prove that in POMDPs with long-run average objective, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-29 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Raimundo Saona , Bruno Ziliotto