Related papers: Empirical Dynamic Programming
We introduce a contractive abstract dynamic programming framework and related policy iteration algorithms, specifically designed for sequential zero-sum games and minimax problems with a general structure. Aside from greater generality, the…
Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) remains a central challenge in sequential decision-making, especially when dealing with large state spaces and long-term optimization criteria. A key step in Bellman dynamic programming algorithms is…
We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…
A Budgeted Markov Decision Process (BMDP) is an extension of a Markov Decision Process to critical applications requiring safety constraints. It relies on a notion of risk implemented in the shape of a cost signal constrained to lie below…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide an elegant mathematical framework for modeling complex decision and planning problems in stochastic domains in which states of the system are observable only indirectly, via a…
We study a class of multi-stage stochastic programs, which incorporate modeling features from Markov decision processes (MDPs). This class includes structured MDPs with continuous action and state spaces. We extend policy graphs to include…
In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…
Discrete time stochastic optimal control problems and Markov decision processes (MDPs), respectively, serve as fundamental models for problems that involve sequential decision making under uncertainty and as such constitute the theoretical…
In most applications of model-based Markov decision processes, the parameters for the unknown underlying model are often estimated from the empirical data. Due to noise, the policy learnedfrom the estimated model is often far from the…
This paper considers robust Markov decision processes under parametric transition distributions. We assume that the true transition distribution is uniquely specified by some parametric distribution, and explicitly enforce that the…
In this work, we study discrete-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) under constraints with Borel state and action spaces and where all the performance functions have the same form of the expected total reward (ETR) criterion over the…
The question of knowing whether the policy Iteration algorithm (PI) for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) has exponential or (strongly) polynomial complexity has attracted much attention in the last 50 years. Recently, Fearnley…
Learning a Markov Decision Process (MDP) from a fixed batch of trajectories is a non-trivial task whose outcome's quality depends on both the amount and the diversity of the sampled regions of the state-action space. Yet, many MDPs are…
We consider infinite horizon dynamic programming problems, where the control at each stage consists of several distinct decisions, each one made by one of several agents. In an earlier work we introduced a policy iteration algorithm, where…
Bayesian approaches developed to solve the optimal design of sequential experiments are mathematically elegant but computationally challenging. Recently, techniques using amortization have been proposed to make these Bayesian approaches…
We consider stochastic dynamic programming problems with high-dimensional, discrete state-spaces and finite, discrete-time horizons that prohibit direct computation of the value function from a given Bellman equation for all states and time…
We present an algorithm called Tropical Dynamic Programming (TDP) which builds upper and lower approximations of the Bellman value functions in risk-neutral Multistage Stochastic Programming (MSP), with independent noises of finite…
We consider inexact policy iteration methods for large-scale infinite-horizon discounted MDPs with finite spaces, a variant of policy iteration where the policy evaluation step is implemented inexactly using an iterative solver for linear…
In supervised learning, we fit a single statistical model to a given data set, assuming that the data is associated with a singular task, which yields well-tuned models for specific use, but does not adapt well to new contexts. By contrast,…
In robust Markov decision processes (MDPs), the uncertainty in the transition kernel is addressed by finding a policy that optimizes the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. While much of the literature has focused on…