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Bounded agents are limited by intrinsic constraints on their ability to process information that is available in their sensors and memory and choose actions and memory updates. In this dissertation, we model these constraints as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-31 Roy Fox

We consider a rate control problem for an $N$-particle weakly interacting finite state Markov process. The process models the state evolution of a large collection of particles and allows for multiple particles to change state…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-03-31 Amarjit Budhiraja , Eric Friedlander

We study three classes of continuous time Markov processes (inclusion process, exclusion process, independent walkers) and a family of interacting diffusions (Brownian energy process). For each model we define a boundary driven process…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2015-06-12 Gioia Carinci , Cristian Giardina' , Claudio Giberti , Frank Redig

The goal of this paper is to analyze distributional Markov Decision Processes as a class of control problems in which the objective is to learn policies that steer the distribution of a cumulative reward toward a prescribed target law,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-09 Nicole Bäuerle , Athanasios Vasileiadis

In this paper we set up an optimal control framework for a hybrid stochastic system with dual or multiple Markov switching diffusion processes, while Markov chains governing these switching diffusions are not identical as assumed by the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-02 Jianmin Shi

Diffusion models excel at sampling from complex, unnormalized distributions. In this work, we extend Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning (ME-RL) to diffusion processes, enabling sampling from the optimal policy trajectory distribution.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Sebastian Sanokowski , Kaustubh Patil

Markov decision processes are useful models of concurrency optimisation problems, but are often intractable for exhaustive verification methods. Recent work has introduced lightweight approximative techniques that sample directly from…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-03-24 Axel Legay , Sean Sedwards , Louis-Marie Traonouez

In this paper we consider a distributed optimization scenario in which a set of agents has to solve a convex optimization problem with separable cost function, local constraint sets and a coupling inequality constraint. We propose a novel…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-04-25 Ivano Notarnicola , Giuseppe Notarstefano

We study entropy-regularized constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) under the soft-max parameterization, in which an agent aims to maximize the entropy-regularized value function while satisfying constraints on the expected total…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-10 Donghao Ying , Yuhao Ding , Javad Lavaei

Several well-known algorithms in the field of combinatorial optimization can be interpreted in terms of the primal-dual method for solving linear programs. For example, Dijkstra's algorithm, the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm, and the Hungarian…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-01-19 Randy Cogill

In this paper, we study the learning of safe policies in the setting of reinforcement learning problems. This is, we aim to control a Markov Decision Process (MDP) of which we do not know the transition probabilities, but we have access to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-14 Santiago Paternain , Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Alejandro Ribeiro

This paper studies the approximation of optimal control policies by quantized (discretized) policies for a very general class of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The problem is motivated by applications in networked control systems,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-05-14 Naci Saldi , Serdar Yüksel , Tamás Linder

We propose a general framework for entropy-regularized average-reward reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs). Our approach is based on extending the linear-programming formulation of policy optimization in MDPs to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-23 Gergely Neu , Anders Jonsson , Vicenç Gómez

We study stochastic optimal control problems for (possibly degenerate) McKean-Vlasov controlled diffusions and obtain discrete-time as well as finite interacting particle approximations. (i) Under mild assumptions, we first prove the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-27 Somnath Pradhan , Serdar Yuksel

Controllable diffusion generation often relies on various heuristics that are seemingly disconnected without a unified understanding. We bridge this gap with Diffusion Controller (DiffCon), a unified control-theoretic view that casts…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Tong Yang , Moonkyung Ryu , Chih-Wei Hsu , Guy Tennenholtz , Yuejie Chi , Craig Boutilier , Bo Dai

A new formulation of Stochastic Model Predictive Output Feedback Control is presented and analyzed as a translation of Stochastic Optimal Output Feedback Control into a receding horizon setting. This requires lifting the design into a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-01 Martin A Sehr , Robert R Bitmead

We consider a hidden Markov model with multiple observation processes, one of which is chosen at each point in time by a policy---a deterministic function of the information state---and attempt to determine which policy minimises the…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-03-17 James Y. Zhao

We study diffusion control problems under parameter uncertainty. Controllers based on plug-in estimation can be brittle due to potential distribution shifts. Bayesian control with a prior on the parameters offers a formulation with beliefs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-03 Jose Blanchet , Jiayi Cheng , Yuewei Ling , Hao Liu , Yang Liu

Interval Markov decision processes are a class of Markov models where the transition probabilities between the states belong to intervals. In this paper, we study the problem of efficient estimation of the optimal policies in Interval…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-09-19 Saber Jafarpour , Samuel Coogan

This paper addresses a key limitation in existing counterfactual inference methods for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Current approaches assume a specific causal model to make counterfactuals identifiable. However, there are usually many…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Jessica Lally , Milad Kazemi , Nicola Paoletti