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We consider the problem of minimizing a certainty equivalent of the total or discounted cost over a finite and an infinite time horizon which is generated by a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). The certainty equivalent…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-07-21 Nicole Bäuerle , Ulrich Rieder

This paper introduces algorithms for problems where a decision maker has to control a system composed of several components and has access to only partial information on the state of each component. Such problems are difficult because of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-25 Victor Cohen , Axel Parmentier

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a general framework for sequential decision-making under latent state uncertainty, yet learning in POMDPs is intractable in the worst case. Motivated by sensing and probing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness B. Shroff

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

The synthesis problem for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is to compute a policy that satisfies a given specification. Such policies have to take the full execution history of a POMDP into account, rendering the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-07-20 Leonore Winterer , Ralf Wimmer , Nils Jansen , Bernd Becker

In this review/tutorial article, we present recent progress on optimal control of partially observed Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). We first present regularity and continuity conditions for POMDPs and their belief-MDP reductions, where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-03 Ali Devran Kara , Serdar Yuksel

Decision-making under uncertainty is a critical aspect of many practical autonomous systems due to incomplete information. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) offer a mathematically principled framework for formulating…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Moran Barenboim , Vadim Indelman

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a fundamental framework for decision-making under uncertainty and partial observability. Since in general optimal policies may require infinite memory, they are hard to implement…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Muqsit Azeem , Debraj Chakraborty , Sudeep Kanav , Jan Kretinsky

In most real-world reinforcement learning applications, state information is only partially observable, which breaks the Markov decision process assumption and leads to inferior performance for algorithms that conflate observations with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-12 Hongming Zhang , Tongzheng Ren , Chenjun Xiao , Dale Schuurmans , Bo Dai

This paper describes sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) with Borel state, observation, and action sets and with the expected total costs. Action sets may…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-07-02 Eugene A. Feinberg , Pavlo O. Kasyanov , Michael Z. Zgurovsky

It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-16 Guido Montufar , Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi , Nihat Ay

We study model-based learning of finite-window policies in tabular partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A common approach to learning under partial observability is to approximate unbounded history dependencies using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Philip Jordan , Maryam Kamgarpour

We present some hardness results on finding the optimal policy for the static formulation of distributionally robust Markov decision processes. We construct problem instances such that when the considered policy class is Markovian and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Yan Li

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) rely on the key assumption that probability distributions are precisely known. Robust POMDPs (RPOMDPs) alleviate this concern by defining imprecise probabilities, referred to as…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Eline M. Bovy , Marnix Suilen , Sebastian Junges , Nils Jansen

We extend anytime constraints to the Markov game setting and the corresponding solution concept of an anytime-constrained equilibrium (ACE). Then, we present a comprehensive theory of anytime-constrained equilibria that includes (1) a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Jeremy McMahan

Autonomous systems with machine learning-based perception can exhibit unpredictable behaviors that are difficult to quantify, let alone verify. Such behaviors are convenient to capture in probabilistic models, but probabilistic model…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-03-17 Matthew Cleaveland , Ivan Ruchkin , Oleg Sokolsky , Insup Lee

Motivated by wide-ranging applications such as video delivery over networks using Multiple Description Codes, congestion control, and inventory management, we study the state-tracking of a Markovian random process with a known transition…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2017-03-06 Parisa Mansourifard , Tara Javidi , Bhaskar Krishnamachari

We consider off-policy evaluation of dynamic treatment rules under sequential ignorability, given an assumption that the underlying system can be modeled as a partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP). We propose an estimator,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-10 Yuchen Hu , Stefan Wager

We present quantum observable Markov decision processes (QOMDPs), the quantum analogues of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). In a QOMDP, an agent's state is represented as a quantum state and the agent can choose a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-06-19 Jennifer Barry , Daniel T. Barry , Scott Aaronson

Decision-theoretic planning with risk-sensitive planning objectives is important for building autonomous agents or decision-support systems for real-world applications. However, this line of research has been largely ignored in the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Yaxin Liu , Sven Koenig