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Here, we explore the problem of error propagation mitigation in modular digital twins as a sequential decision process. Building on a companion study that used a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to infer latent error regimes from surrogate-physics…
We study model-based learning of finite-window policies in tabular partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A common approach to learning under partial observability is to approximate unbounded history dependencies using…
We investigate the problem of best policy identification in discounted linear Markov Decision Processes in the fixed confidence setting under a generative model. We first derive an instance-specific lower bound on the expected number of…
A new approach to computation of optimal policies for MDP (Markov decision process) models is introduced. The main idea is to solve not one, but an entire family of MDPs, parameterized by a weighting factor $\zeta$ that appears in the…
This paper investigates the limit behavior of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) made of independent particles evolving in a common environment, when the number of particles goes to infinity. In the finite horizon case or with a discounted…
We study the synthesis of a policy in a Markov decision process (MDP) following which an agent reaches a target state in the MDP while minimizing its total discounted cost. The problem combines a reachability criterion with a discounted…
This paper proposes a novel termination criterion, termed the advantage gap function, for finite state and action Markov decision processes (MDP) and reinforcement learning (RL). By incorporating this advantage gap function into the design…
Policy optimization is a widely-used method in reinforcement learning. Due to its local-search nature, however, theoretical guarantees on global optimality often rely on extra assumptions on the Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that bypass…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…
We consider the problem of learning in adversarial Markov decision processes [MDPs] with an oblivious adversary in a full-information setting. The agent interacts with an environment during $T$ episodes, each of which consists of $H$…
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms combined with value function approximation have recently achieved impressive performance in a variety of application domains. However, the theoretical understanding of such algorithms is limited,…
Motivated by the many real-world applications of reinforcement learning (RL) that require safe-policy iterations, we consider the problem of off-policy evaluation (OPE) -- the problem of evaluating a new policy using the historical data…
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…
Policy iteration (PI) is a widely used algorithm for synthesizing optimal feedback control policies across many engineering and scientific applications. When PI is deployed on infinite-horizon, nonlinear, autonomous optimal-control…
Markov Decision Processes are classically solved using Value Iteration and Policy Iteration algorithms. Recent interest in Reinforcement Learning has motivated the study of methods inspired by optimization, such as gradient ascent. Among…
Bounded policy iteration is an approach to solving infinite-horizon POMDPs that represents policies as stochastic finite-state controllers and iteratively improves a controller by adjusting the parameters of each node using linear…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) have recently become popular among many AI researchers because they serve as a natural model for planning under uncertainty. Value iteration is a well-known algorithm for finding…
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…
We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no…
We consider Incentive Decision Processes, where a principal seeks to reduce its costs due to another agent's behavior, by offering incentives to the agent for alternate behavior. We focus on the case where a principal interacts with a…