Related papers: Average-Cost Markov Decision Processes with Weakly…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…
We consider a non-stationary variant of a sequential stochastic optimization problem, in which the underlying cost functions may change along the horizon. We propose a measure, termed variation budget, that controls the extent of said…
Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…
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…
This paper studies a large number of homogeneous Markov decision processes where the transition probabilities and costs are coupled in the empirical distribution of states (also called mean-field). The state of each process is not known to…
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…
A new class of stochastic processes called independent and periodically identically distributed (i.p.i.d.) processes is defined to capture periodically varying statistical behavior. A novel Bayesian theory is developed for detecting a…
We propose a principled kernel-based policy iteration algorithm to solve the continuous-state Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In contrast to most decision-theoretic planning frameworks, which assume fully known state transition models, we…
Reinforcement learning considers the problem of finding policies that maximize an expected cumulative reward in a Markov decision process with unknown transition probabilities. In this paper we consider the problem of finding optimal…
Dealing with unichain MDPs, we consider stationary distributions of policies that coincide in all but $n$ states. In these states each policy chooses one of two possible actions. We show that the stationary distributions of n+1 such…
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…
We tackle the problem of acting in an unknown finite and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) for which the expected shortest path from any state to any other state is bounded by a finite number $D$. An MDP consists of $S$ states and $A$…
The problem of constrained Markov decision process is considered. An agent aims to maximize the expected accumulated discounted reward subject to multiple constraints on its costs (the number of constraints is relatively small). A new dual…
We consider the problem of approximating the stationary distribution of an ergodic Markov chain given a set of sampled transitions. Classical simulation-based approaches assume access to the underlying process so that trajectories of…
In this paper, we present a novel iterative Monte Carlo method for approximating the stationary probability of a single state of a positive recurrent Markov chain. We utilize the characterization that the stationary probability of a state…
We consider robust Markov Decision Processes with Borel state and action spaces, unbounded cost and finite time horizon. Our formulation leads to a Stackelberg game against nature. Under integrability, continuity and compactness assumptions…
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 this work, we study economic model predictive control (MPC) in situations where the optimal operating behavior is periodic. In such a setting, the performance of a standard economic MPC scheme without terminal conditions can generally be…
In deterministic and stochastic control theory, relaxed or randomized control policies allow for versatile mathematical analysis (on continuity, compactness, convexity and approximations) to be applicable with no artificial restrictions on…
Active classification, i.e., the sequential decision-making process aimed at data acquisition for classification purposes, arises naturally in many applications, including medical diagnosis, intrusion detection, and object tracking. In this…