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The importance of hierarchically structured representations for tractable planning has long been acknowledged. However, the questions of how people discover such abstractions and how to define a set of optimal abstractions remain open. This…
Optimal queueing control of multi-hop networks remains a challenging problem even in the simplest scenarios. In this paper, we consider a two-hop half-duplex relaying system with random channel connectivity. The relay is equipped with a…
We introduce synchronizing objectives for Markov decision processes (MDP). Intuitively, a synchronizing objective requires that eventually, at every step there is a state which concentrates almost all the probability mass. In particular, it…
Optimal policies in Markov decision processes (MDPs) are very sensitive to model misspecification. This raises serious concerns about deploying them in high-stake domains. Robust MDPs (RMDP) provide a promising framework to mitigate…
Efficient representations and solutions for large decision problems with continuous and discrete variables are among the most important challenges faced by the designers of automated decision support systems. In this paper, we describe a…
We consider discounted infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward while satisfying expected cumulative constraints. Motivated by…
Gradient Symbolic Computation is proposed as a means of solving discrete global optimization problems using a neurally plausible continuous stochastic dynamical system. Gradient symbolic dynamics involves two free parameters that must be…
The pseudo-marginal algorithm is a variant of the Metropolis--Hastings algorithm which samples asymptotically from a probability distribution when it is only possible to estimate unbiasedly an unnormalized version of its density.…
The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…
This paper presents a technique for reduced-order Markov modeling for compact representation of time-series data. In this work, symbolic dynamics-based tools have been used to infer an approximate generative Markov model. The time-series…
In this paper, we consider planning in stochastic shortest path (SSP) problems, a subclass of Markov Decision Problems (MDP). We focus on medium-size problems whose state space can be fully enumerated. This problem has numerous important…
This paper studies motion planning of a mobile robot under uncertainty. The control objective is to synthesize a {finite-memory} control policy, such that a high-level task specified as a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula is satisfied…
Graph games and Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models in reactive synthesis and verification of probabilistic systems with nondeterminism. The class of $\omega$-regular winning conditions; e.g., safety, reachability,…
The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…
Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) allow to compute reliable solutions for dynamic decision problems whose evolution is modeled by rewards and partially-known transition probabilities. Unfortunately, accounting for uncertainty in the…
This paper introduces a novel abstraction-based framework for controller synthesis of nonlinear discrete-time stochastic systems. The focus is on probabilistic reach-avoid specifications. The framework is based on abstracting a stochastic…
We study the online estimation of the optimal policy of a Markov decision process (MDP). We propose a class of Stochastic Primal-Dual (SPD) methods which exploit the inherent minimax duality of Bellman equations. The SPD methods update a…
A symbolic approach to decentralized set-valued state estimation and prediction for systems that admit a hybrid state machine representations is proposed. The decentralized computational scheme represents a conj unction of a finite number…
In this paper, we consider the online computation of a strategy that aims at optimizing the expected average reward in a Markov decision process. The strategy is computed with a receding horizon and using Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS). We…
We give polynomial-time algorithms for computing the values of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with limsup and liminf objectives. A real-valued reward is assigned to each state, and the value of an infinite path in the MDP is the limsup…