Related papers: Topological Value Iteration Algorithms

Time-inhomogeneous finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP) are frequently employed to model decision-making in dynamic treatment regimes and other statistical reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios. These fields, especially healthcare…

This paper studies convergence properties of optimal values and actions for discounted and average-cost Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with weakly continuous transition probabilities and applies these properties to the stochastic…

We consider the problem of controlling a Markov decision process (MDP) with a large state space, so as to minimize average cost. Since it is intractable to compete with the optimal policy for large scale problems, we pursue the more modest…

While value iteration (VI) is a standard solution approach to simple stochastic games (SSGs), it suffered from the lack of a stopping criterion. Recently, several solutions have appeared, among them also "optimistic" VI (OVI). However, OVI…

Moving Target Defense (MTD) has emerged as a proactive and dynamic framework to counteract evolving cyber threats. Traditional MTD approaches often rely on assumptions about the attackers knowledge and behavior. However, real-world…

In this paper, we develop a Topological Approximate Dynamic Programming (TADP) method for planningin stochastic systems modeled as Markov Decision Processesto maximize the probability of satisfying high-level systemspecifications expressed…

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 consider the task of estimating a structural model of dynamic decisions by a human agent based upon the observable history of implemented actions and visited states. This problem has an inherent nested structure: in the inner problem, an…

We consider the infinite-horizon linear Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where the transition probabilities of the dynamic model can be linearly parameterized with the help of a predefined low-dimensional feature mapping. While the…

Higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) is an efficient way for data reduction and also eliciting intrinsic structure of multi-dimensional array data. It has been used in many applications, and some of them involve incomplete…

We study infinite-horizon robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) on continuous state spaces with structured rectangular ambiguity set. The proposed ambiguity set falls within the convex hull of unknown generating kernels. We utilize the…

The paper deals with finite-state Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights assigned to each state-action pair. New algorithms are presented to classify end components according to their limiting behavior with respect to the…

We consider local planning in fixed-horizon MDPs with a generative model under the assumption that the optimal value function lies close to the span of a feature map. The generative model provides a local access to the MDP: The planner can…

Over the past decade, various matrix completion algorithms have been developed. Thresholded singular value decomposition (SVD) is a popular technique in implementing many of them. A sizable number of studies have shown its theoretical and…

STV and ranked pairs (RP) are two well-studied voting rules for group decision-making. They proceed in multiple rounds, and are affected by how ties are broken in each round. However, the literature is surprisingly vague about how ties…

Markov Decision Problems (MDPs) provide a foundational framework for modelling sequential decision-making across diverse domains, guided by optimality criteria such as discounted and average rewards. However, these criteria have inherent…

We study the general approach to accelerating the convergence of the most widely used solution method of Markov decision processes with the total expected discounted reward. Inspired by the monotone behavior of the contraction mappings in…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the…

Planning problems where effects of actions are non-deterministic can be modeled as Markov decision processes. Planning problems are usually goal-directed. This paper proposes several techniques for exploiting the goal-directedness to…

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are fundamental to decision-making under uncertainty. We introduce a novel scalable approach to accelerate upper bound estimation in Point-Based Value Iteration (PBVI) algorithms, the…