Related papers: Symblicit algorithms for optimal strategy synthesi…

We are interested in risk constraints for infinite horizon discrete time Markov decision processes (MDPs). Starting with average reward MDPs, we show that increasing concave stochastic dominance constraints on the empirical distribution of…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are standard models for dynamic systems with probabilistic and nondeterministic behaviour in uncertain environments. We prove that in POMDPs with long-run average objective, the…

In hierarchical planning for Markov decision processes (MDPs), temporal abstraction allows planning with macro-actions that take place at different time scale in form of sequential composition. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to…

Markov decision processes can be viewed as transformers of probability distributions. While this view is useful from a practical standpoint to reason about trajectories of distributions, basic reachability and safety problems are known to…

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…

A Relational Markov Decision Process (RMDP) is a first-order representation to express all instances of a single probabilistic planning domain with possibly unbounded number of objects. Early work in RMDPs outputs generalized…

The paper addresses two variants of the stochastic shortest path problem ('optimize the accumulated weight until reaching a goal state') in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights. The first variant optimizes partial expected…

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…

In this paper, we provide a compositional approach for constructing finite abstractions (a.k.a. finite Markov decision processes (MDPs)) of interconnected discrete-time stochastic switched systems. The proposed framework is based on a…

We revisit the problem of finding optimal strategies for deterministic Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs), and a closely related problem of testing feasibility of systems of $m$ linear inequalities on $n$ real variables with at most two…

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…

We study policy optimization in an infinite horizon, $\gamma$-discounted constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). Our objective is to return a policy that achieves large expected reward with a small constraint violation. We consider the…

Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…

We study planning problems where autonomous agents operate inside environments that are subject to uncertainties and not fully observable. Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a natural formal model to capture such…

This paper studies the remote estimation of multiple Markov sources over a lossy and rate-constrained channel. Unlike most existing studies that treat all source states equally, we exploit the \emph{semantics of information} and consider…

We present an optimization-based framework for robust permissive synthesis for Interval Markov Decision Processes (IMDPs), motivated by robotic decision-making under transition uncertainty. In many robotic systems, model inaccuracies and…

Symbolic representations have been used successfully in off-line planning algorithms for Markov decision processes. We show that they can also improve the performance of on-line planners. In addition to reducing computation time, symbolic…

This paper studies optimal motion planning subject to motion and environment uncertainties. By modeling the system as a probabilistic labeled Markov decision process (PL-MDP), the control objective is to synthesize a finite-memory policy,…

We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…

This paper studies the approximation of optimal control policies by quantized (discretized) policies for a very general class of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The problem is motivated by applications in networked control systems,…