Related papers: On the Complexity of Policy Iteration
Tackling large approximate dynamic programming or reinforcement learning problems requires methods that can exploit regularities, or intrinsic structure, of the problem in hand. Most current methods are geared towards exploiting the…
We introduce a novel theoretical framework for Return On Investment (ROI) maximization in repeated decision-making. Our setting is motivated by the use case of companies that regularly receive proposals for technological innovations and…
This paper investigates a series of optimization problems for one-counter Markov decision processes (MDPs) and integer-weighted MDPs with finite state space. Specifically, it considers problems addressing termination probabilities and…
We consider the reinforcement learning problem for the constrained Markov decision process (CMDP), which plays a central role in satisfying safety or resource constraints in sequential learning and decision-making. In this problem, we are…
In this paper, we demonstrate that policy iteration, introduced in the context of HJB equations in [Forsyth & Labahn, 2007], is an extremely simple generic algorithm for solving linear complementarity problems resulting from the finite…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide an elegant mathematical framework for modeling complex decision and planning problems in stochastic domains in which states of the system are observable only indirectly, via a…
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…
Interpretability of reinforcement learning policies is essential for many real-world tasks but learning such interpretable policies is a hard problem. Particularly rule-based policies such as decision trees and rules lists are difficult to…
There is much interest in using partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) as a formal model for planning in stochastic domains. This paper is concerned with finding optimal policies for POMDPs. We propose several improvements…
This paper addresses the challenge of solving Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with $d > 1$ constraints when the transition dynamics are unknown, but samples can be drawn from a generative model. We propose a model-based…
Long-term fairness is an important factor of consideration in designing and deploying learning-based decision systems in high-stake decision-making contexts. Recent work has proposed the use of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to formulate…
Multi-objective optimization models that encode ordered sequential constraints provide a solution to model various challenging problems including encoding preferences, modeling a curriculum, and enforcing measures of safety. A recently…
We study and provide efficient algorithms for multi-objective model checking problems for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Given an MDP, M, and given multiple linear-time (\omega -regular or LTL) properties \varphi\_i, and probabilities…
Bisimulation metrics define a distance measure between states of a Markov decision process (MDP) based on a comparison of reward sequences. Due to this property they provide theoretical guarantees in value function approximation (VFA). In…
We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a risk measure of variability in cost, under the risk-aware MDPs paradigm. Previous studies showed that risk-aware MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handling risk, can be…
This paper studies temporal planning in probabilistic environments, modeled as labeled Markov decision processes (MDPs), with user preferences over multiple temporal goals. Existing works reflect such preferences as a prioritized list of…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…
We consider the problem of computing optimal policies in average-reward Markov decision processes. This classical problem can be formulated as a linear program directly amenable to saddle-point optimization methods, albeit with a number of…
We consider the task of evaluating a policy for a Markov decision process (MDP). The standard unbiased technique for evaluating a policy is to deploy the policy and observe its performance. We show that the data collected from deploying a…
We present a method for a certain class of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can relate the optimal policy back to one or more reward sources in the environment. For a given initial state, without fully computing the value function,…