Related papers: Constrained total undiscounted continuous-time Mar…
We consider a discrete-time Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces. The performance criterion is to maximize a total expected {utility determined by unbounded return function. It is shown the existence of optimal…
This paper discusses the functional stability of closed-loop Markov Chains under optimal policies resulting from a discounted optimality criterion, forming Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We investigate the stability of MDPs in the sense…
This paper shows that the optimal policy and value functions of a Markov Decision Process (MDP), either discounted or not, can be captured by a finite-horizon undiscounted Optimal Control Problem (OCP), even if based on an inexact model.…
In constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with adversarial rewards and constraints, a well-known impossibility result prevents any algorithm from attaining both sublinear regret and sublinear constraint violation, when competing…
We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…
This paper describes the structure of optimal policies for infinite-state Markov Decision Processes with setwise continuous transition probabilities. The action sets may be noncompact. The objective criteria are either the expected total…
Adaptive control problems are notoriously difficult to solve even in the presence of plant-specific controllers. One way to by-pass the intractable computation of the optimal policy is to restate the adaptive control as the minimization of…
Labeled continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) describe processes subject to random timing and partial observability. In applications such as runtime monitoring, we must incorporate past observations. The timing of these observations matters…
In many operations management problems, we need to make decisions sequentially to minimize the cost while satisfying certain constraints. One modeling approach to study such problems is constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). When…
We study the problem of synthesizing a policy that maximizes the entropy of a Markov decision process (MDP) subject to a temporal logic constraint. Such a policy minimizes the predictability of the paths it generates, or dually, maximizes…
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…
This paper provides conditions under which total-cost and average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) can be reduced to discounted ones. Results are given for transient total-cost MDPs with tran- sition rates whose values may be greater…
In this paper, we study a continuous-time discounted jump Markov decision process with both controlled actions and observations. The observation is only available for a discrete set of time instances. At each time of observation, one has to…
This paper concentrates on the minimal hitting probability of continuous-time controlled Markov systems (CTCMSs) with countable state and finite admissible action spaces. The existence of an optimal policy is first proved. In particular,…
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…
We are interested in risk constraints for infinite horizon discrete time Markov decision processes (MDPs). Starting with average reward MDPs, we show that increasing concave stochastic dominance constraints on the empirical distribution of…
This paper studies Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with atomless initial state distributions and atomless transition probabilities. Such MDPs are called atomless. The initial state distribution is considered to be fixed. We show that for…
Within the framework of probably approximately correct Markov decision processes (PAC-MDP), much theoretical work has focused on methods to attain near optimality after a relatively long period of learning and exploration. However,…
Many sequential decision problems involve optimizing one objective function while imposing constraints on other objectives. Constrained Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (C-POMDP) model this case with transition uncertainty and…
The main goal of this paper is to derive sufficient conditions for the existence of an optimal control strategy for the long run average continuous control problem of piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMP's) taking values in a…