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Related papers: A Theory of Goal-Oriented MDPs with Dead Ends

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The Single-Source Shortest Path (SSSP) problem is well-known for the challenges in developing fast, practical, and work-efficient parallel algorithms. This work introduces a novel shortest path search method. It allows paths with different…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Huashan Yu , Xiaolin Wang , Yingwei Luo

We consider a class of two-player zero-sum stochastic games with finite state and compact control spaces, which we call stochastic shortest path (SSP) games. They are undiscounted total cost stochastic dynamic games that have a cost-free…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-12-31 Huizhen Yu

In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end approach for solving the multi-goal path planning problem in obstacle environments. Our proposed model, called S&Reg, integrates multi-task learning networks with a TSP solver and a path planner…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-08-09 Yuan Huang , Kairui Gu , Hee-hyol Lee

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Marnix Suilen , Thom Badings , Eline M. Bovy , David Parker , Nils Jansen

The paper addresses two variants of the stochastic shortest path problem ('optimize the accumulated weight until reaching a goal state') in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights. The first variant optimizes partial expected…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-05-01 Jakob Piribauer , Christel Baier

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a mathematical framework for modeling sequential decision making under uncertainty. The classical approaches for solving MDPs are well known and have been widely studied, some of which rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-18 Joshua R. Bertram , Xuxi Yang , Peng Wei

In this paper we consider shortest path problems in a directed graph where the transitions between nodes are subject to uncertainty. We use a minimax formulation, where the objective is to guarantee that a special destination state is…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-08-08 Dimitri Bertsekas

Possibilistic and qualitative POMDPs (pi-POMDPs) are counterparts of POMDPs used to model situations where the agent's initial belief or observation probabilities are imprecise due to lack of past experiences or insufficient data…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-09-27 Nicolas Drougard , Florent Teichteil-Konigsbuch , Jean-Loup Farges , Didier Dubois

The fixed-horizon constrained Markov Decision Process (C-MDP) is a well-known model for planning in stochastic environments under operating constraints. Chance-Constrained MDP (CC-MDP) is a variant that allows bounding the probability of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-19 Majid Khonji

Recent research in decision theoretic planning has focussed on making the solution of Markov decision processes (MDPs) more feasible. We develop a family of algorithms for structured reachability analysis of MDPs that are suitable when an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-24 Craig Boutilier , Ronen I. Brafman , Christopher W. Geib

This paper studies constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with constraints against stochastic thresholds, aiming at safety of reinforcement learning in unknown and uncertain environments. We leverage a Growing-Window estimator…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-25 Qian Zuo , Fengxiang He

We study the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. We first derive sample complexity bounds when the learner has access to a generative model. We show that there exists a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 Liyu Chen , Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

Sample average approximation--based stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) and model predictive control (MPC) are two different methods for approaching multistage stochastic optimization. In this paper we investigate the conditions under…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Dominic S. T. Keehan , Andrew B. Philpott , Edward J. Anderson

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are systems in which one agent interacts with a stochastic environment, and receives only partial information about the current state. In a multi-environment POMDP (MEPOMDP), the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Léonard Brice , Filip Cano , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Thomas A. Henzinger , Stefanie Muroya

Advances in mobile computing technologies have made it possible to monitor and apply data-driven interventions across complex systems in real time. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the primary model for sequential decision problems with…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-03-20 Longshaokan Wang , Eric B. Laber , Katie Witkiewitz

We consider the stochastic shortest path planning problem in MDPs, i.e., the problem of designing policies that ensure reaching a goal state from a given initial state with minimum accrued cost. In order to account for rare but important…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-30 Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Anushri Dixit , Joel W. Burdick , Aaron D. Ames

As modern problems such as autonomous driving, control of robotic components, and medical diagnostics have become increasingly difficult to solve analytically, data-driven decision-making has seen a large gain in interest. Where there are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-27 Keith Badger

This paper is concerned with a data-driven technique for constructing finite Markov decision processes (MDPs) as finite abstractions of discrete-time stochastic control systems with unknown dynamics while providing formal closeness…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-30 Abolfazl Lavaei , Sadegh Soudjani , Emilio Frazzoli , Majid Zamani

We study online learning in episodic constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the learner aims at collecting as much reward as possible over the episodes, while satisfying some long-term constraints during the learning process.…

Stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) is a state-of-the-art method for solving multi-stage stochastic optimization, widely used for modeling real-world process optimization tasks. Unfortunately, SDDP has a worst-case complexity that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-03 Hanjun Dai , Yuan Xue , Zia Syed , Dale Schuurmans , Bo Dai