Related papers: Solution Methods for Constrained Markov Decision P…

We propose an algorithm for deterministic continuous Markov Decision Processes with sparse rewards that computes the optimal policy exactly with no dependency on the size of the state space. The algorithm has time complexity of $O( |R|^3…

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…

Contextual Markov decision processes (CMDPs) describe a class of reinforcement learning problems in which the transition kernels and reward functions can change over time with different MDPs indexed by a context variable. While CMDPs serve…

Chance Constrained Markov Decision Processes maximize reward subject to a bounded probability of failure, and have been frequently applied for planning with potentially dangerous outcomes or unknown environments. Solution algorithms have…

This paper describes sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) with Borel state, observation, and action sets and with the expected total costs. Action sets may…

A method is developed to numerically solve chance constrained optimal control problems. The chance constraints are reformulated as nonlinear constraints that retain the probability properties of the original constraint. The reformulation…

Recent research in decision theoretic planning has focussed on making the solution of Markov decision processes (MDPs) more feasible. We develop a family of algorithms for structured reachability analysis of MDPs that are suitable when an…

Rather than augmenting rewards with penalties for undesired behavior, Constrained Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (CPOMDPs) plan safely by imposing inviolable hard constraint value budgets. Previous work performing online…

Markov Decision Process (MDP) is the underlying model for optimal planning for decision-theoretic agents in stochastic environments. Although much research focuses on solving MDP problems both in tabular form or using factored…

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,…

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…

Reinforcement learning is widely used in applications where one needs to perform sequential decisions while interacting with the environment. The problem becomes more challenging when the decision requirement includes satisfying some safety…

In this paper, we propose a novel class of Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMPs) that are designed to sample from probability distributions $\pi$ supported on a convex set $\mathcal{M}$. This class of PDMPs adapts the concept of…

Many physical systems have underlying safety considerations that require that the policy employed ensures the satisfaction of a set of constraints. The analytical formulation usually takes the form of a Constrained Markov Decision Process…

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimization and learning for constrained and multi-objective Markov decision processes, for both discounted rewards and expected average rewards. We formulate the problems as zero-sum games where…

The specification of aMarkov decision process (MDP) can be difficult. Reward function specification is especially problematic; in practice, it is often cognitively complex and time-consuming for users to precisely specify rewards. This work…

We consider the Markov Decision Process (MDP) of selecting a subset of items at each step, termed the Select-MDP (S-MDP). The large state and action spaces of S-MDPs make them intractable to solve with typical reinforcement learning (RL)…

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…

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple limit-average (or mean-payoff) objectives. There exist two different views: (i) the expectation semantics, where the goal is to optimize the expected mean-payoff objective, and (ii)…

We present a method for solving implicit (factored) Markov decision processes (MDPs) with very large state spaces. We introduce a property of state space partitions which we call epsilon-homogeneity. Intuitively, an epsilon-homogeneous…