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For time-inconsistent stochastic controls in discrete time and finite horizon, an open problem in Bj\"ork and Murgoci (Finance Stoch, 2014) is the existence of an equilibrium control. A nonrandomized Borel measurable Markov equilibrium…

Structural results impose sufficient conditions on the model parameters of a Markov decision process (MDP) so that the optimal policy is an increasing function of the underlying state. The classical assumptions for MDP structural results…

Mixed observable Markov decision processes (MOMDPs) are a modeling framework for autonomous systems described by both fully and partially observable states. In this work, we study the problem of synthesizing a control policy for MOMDPs that…

Optimal control in non-stationary Markov decision processes (MDP) is a challenging problem. The aim in such a control problem is to maximize the long-term discounted reward when the transition dynamics or the reward function can change over…

This paper considers random access in deadline-constrained broadcasting with frame-synchronized traffic. To enhance the maximum achievable timely delivery ratio (TDR), we define a dynamic control scheme that allows each active node to…

Consumption Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are probabilistic decision-making models of resource-constrained systems. In a CMDP, the controller possesses a certain amount of a critical resource, such as electric power. Each action of the…

We consider a change-point detection problem for a simple class of Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMPs). A continuous-time PDMP is observed in discrete time and through noise, and the aim is to propose a numerical method to…

In this paper, we develop a rigorous optimal control-theoretic approach to Transformer training that respects key structural constraints such as (i) realized-input-independence during execution, (ii) the ensemble control nature of the…

Autonomous agents often operate in scenarios where the state is partially observed. In addition to maximizing their cumulative reward, agents must execute complex tasks with rich temporal and logical structures. These tasks can be expressed…

We consider a large family of discrete and continuous time controlled Markov processes and study an ergodic risk-sensitive minimization problem. Under a blanket stability assumption, we provide a complete analysis to this problem. In…

Designing control policies for large, distributed systems is challenging, especially in the context of critical, temporal logic based specifications (e.g., safety) that must be met with high probability. Compositional methods for such…

We develop a model-free approach to optimally control stochastic, Markovian systems subject to a reach-avoid constraint. Specifically, the state trajectory must remain within a safe set while reaching a target set within a finite time…

We propose and analyze a temporal concatenation heuristic for solving large-scale finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP), which divides the MDP into smaller sub-problems along the time horizon and generates an overall solution by…

This paper investigates a class of optimal control problems associated with Markov processes with local state information. The decision-maker has only local access to a subset of a state vector information as often encountered in…

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 study the $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-PAC policy identification problem in finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes. Existing approaches provide finite-time guarantees for approximate settings ($\varepsilon>0$) but suffer from high…

We study the problem of synthesizing a controller that maximizes the entropy of a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) subject to a constraint on the expected total reward. Such a controller minimizes the predictability of a…

We consider sensor scheduling as the optimal observability problem for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This model fits to the cases where a Markov process is observed by a single sensor which needs to be dynamically…

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) offer a fairly generic and powerful framework to discuss the notion of optimal policies for dynamic systems, in particular when the dynamics are stochastic. However, computing the optimal policy of an MDP…

We consider the problem of approximating the reachability probabilities in Markov decision processes (MDP) with uncountable (continuous) state and action spaces. While there are algorithms that, for special classes of such MDP, provide a…