Related papers: Discounted Continuous-time Markov Decision Process…
In the classical static optimal reinsurance problem, the cost of capital for the insurer's risk exposure determined by a monetary risk measure is minimized over the class of reinsurance treaties represented by increasing Lipschitz retained…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) provided we can only access its transition function through a generative sampling model that given any…
We describe a nonlinear generalization of dual dynamic programming theory and its application to value function estimation for deterministic control problems over continuous state and action spaces, in a discrete-time infinite horizon…
We study stochastic motion planning problems which involve a controlled process, with possibly discontinuous sample paths, visiting certain subsets of the state-space while avoiding others in a sequential fashion. For this purpose, we first…
In the Markov decision process model, policies are usually evaluated by expected cumulative rewards. As this decision criterion is not always suitable, we propose in this paper an algorithm for computing a policy optimal for the quantile…
A Markov decision process can be parameterized by a transition kernel and a reward function. Both play essential roles in the study of reinforcement learning as evidenced by their presence in the Bellman equations. In our inquiry of various…
We consider policy evaluation in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision problems (MDPs) with infinite spaces. We reformulate this task a compositional stochastic program with a function-valued decision variable that belongs to a…
We consider finite horizon Markov decision processes under performance measures that involve both the mean and the variance of the cumulative reward. We show that either randomized or history-based policies can improve performance. We prove…
This paper concerns computation of optimal policies in which the one-step reward function contains a cost term that models Kullback-Leibler divergence with respect to nominal dynamics. This technique was introduced by Todorov in 2007, where…
In this paper, we show how a simulated Markov decision process (MDP) built by the so-called \emph{baseline} policies, can be used to compute a different policy, namely the \emph{simulated optimal} policy, for which the performance of this…
Economic Model Predictive Control (MPC) dissipativity theory is central to discussing the stability of policies resulting from minimizing economic stage costs. In its current form, the dissipativity theory for economic MPC applies to…
Stochastic processes find applications in modelling systems in a variety of disciplines. A large number of stochastic models considered are Markovian in nature. It is often observed that higher order Markov processes can model the data…
We use Markov risk measures to formulate a risk-averse version of the undiscounted total cost problem for a transient controlled Markov process. We derive risk-averse dynamic programming equations and we show that a randomized policy may be…
Recent work [Ran22] formulated a class of optimal control problems involving positive linear systems, linear stage costs, and elementwise constraints on control. It was shown that the problem admits linear optimal cost and the associated…
Piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMPs) are a class of continuous-time Markov processes that were recently used to develop a new class of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. However, the implementation of the processes is…
In the optimization of dynamic systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers the peak Constrained Markov Decision Process (PCMDP), where…
The standard Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation hinges on the assumption that an action is executed immediately after it was chosen. However, assuming it is often unrealistic and can lead to catastrophic failures in applications such…
In this paper, we study asymptotic properties of problems of control of stochastic discrete time systems (also known as Markov decision processes) with time averaging and time discounting optimality criteria, and we establish that the…
Most reinforcement learning methods are based upon the key assumption that the transition dynamics and reward functions are fixed, that is, the underlying Markov decision process is stationary. However, in many real-world applications, this…
We consider a risk-sensitive optimization of consumption-utility on infinite time horizon where the one-period investment gain depends on an underlying economic state whose evolution over time is assumed to be described by a discrete-time,…