Related papers: Topological Value Iteration Algorithms
A popular perspective in Reinforcement learning (RL) casts the problem as probabilistic inference on a graphical model of the Markov decision process (MDP). The core object of study is the probability of each state-action pair being visited…
Recursion is the fundamental paradigm to finitely describe potentially infinite objects. As state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms cannot directly reason about recursion, they must rely on the practitioner's ingenuity in…
To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…
We are interested in the analysis of very large continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) with many distinct rates. Such models arise naturally in the context of reliability analysis, e.g., of computer network performability analysis, of power…
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…
The focus of this paper is on stochastic variational inequalities (VI) under Markovian noise. A prominent application of our algorithmic developments is the stochastic policy evaluation problem in reinforcement learning. Prior…
In reinforcement learning, the reward function on current state and action is widely used. When the objective is about the expectation of the (discounted) total reward only, it works perfectly. However, if the objective involves the total…
Most algorithms for solving POMDPs iteratively improve a value function that implicitly represents a policy and are said to search in value function space. This paper presents an approach to solving POMDPs that represents a policy…
Planning under uncertainty is a central problem in the study of automated sequential decision making, and has been addressed by researchers in many different fields, including AI planning, decision analysis, operations research, control…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…
Interval Markov Decision Processes (IMDPs) are finite-state uncertain Markov models, where the transition probabilities belong to intervals. Recently, there has been a surge of research on employing IMDPs as abstractions of stochastic…
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…
Reinforcement Learning is a powerful framework for training agents to navigate different situations, but it is susceptible to changes in environmental dynamics. However, solving Markov Decision Processes that are robust to changes is…
In optimization, one of the well-known classical algorithms is power iterations. Simply stated, the algorithm recovers the dominant eigenvector of some diagonalizable matrix. Since numerous optimization problems can be formulated as an…
We introduce a novel approach to hierarchical reinforcement learning for Linearly-solvable Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs) in the infinite-horizon average-reward setting. Unlike previous work, our approach allows learning low-level and…
We consider a decision-making problem where the environment varies both in space and time. Such problems arise naturally when considering e.g., the navigation of an underwater robot amidst ocean currents or the navigation of an aerial…
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…
Risk-averse total-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) offer a promising framework for modeling and solving undiscounted infinite-horizon objectives. Existing model-based algorithms for risk measures like the entropic risk measure (ERM)…
We consider a general class of total cost Markov decision processes (MDP) in which the one-stage costs can have arbitrary signs, but the sum of the negative parts of the one-stage costs is finite for all policies and all initial states. We…
Advances in mobile computing technologies have made it possible to monitor and apply data-driven interventions across complex systems in real time. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the primary model for sequential decision problems with…