Related papers: Approximation of Markov Processes by Lower Dimensi…
This paper introduces two mechanisms for computing over-approximations of sets of reachable states, with the aim of ensuring termination of state-space exploration. The first mechanism consists in over-approximating the automata…
We consider the convergence of a continuous-time Markov chain approximation X^h, h>0, to an R^d-valued Levy process X. The state space of X^h is an equidistant lattice and its Q-matrix is chosen to approximate the generator of X. In…
This paper discusses algorithms for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs) that have monotone optimal policies. We propose a two-stage alternating convex optimization scheme that can accelerate the search for an optimal policy by…
Markov jump processes are continuous-time stochastic processes with a wide range of applications in both natural and social sciences. Despite their widespread use, inference in these models is highly non-trivial and typically proceeds via…
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 develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…
In this work we introduce new approximate similarity relations that are shown to be key for policy (or control) synthesis over general Markov decision processes. The models of interest are discrete-time Markov decision processes, endowed…
Hybrid systems, and Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes in particular, are widely used to model and numerically study systems exhibiting multiple time scales in biochemical reaction kinetics and related areas. In this paper an almost…
We propose a novel, tractable latent state inference scheme for Markov jump processes, for which exact inference is often intractable. Our approach is based on an entropic matching framework that can be embedded into the well-known…
The fixed-horizon constrained Markov Decision Process (C-MDP) is a well-known model for planning in stochastic environments under operating constraints. Chance-Constrained MDP (CC-MDP) is a variant that allows bounding the probability of…
Markov models are widely used to describe processes of stochastic dynamics. Here, we show that Markov models are a natural consequence of the dynamical principle of Maximum Caliber. First, we show that when there are different possible…
We consider finite model approximations of discrete-time partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) under the discounted cost criterion. After converting the original partially observed stochastic control problem to a fully…
Filtering is concerned with the sequential estimation of the state, and uncertainties, of a Markovian system, given noisy observations. It is particularly difficult to achieve accurate filtering in complex dynamical systems, such as those…
For a wide class of continuous-time Markov processes, including all irreducible hypoelliptic diffusions evolving on an open, connected subset of $\RL^d$, the following are shown to be equivalent: (i) The process satisfies (a slightly weaker…
Predictability of behavior has emerged an an important characteristic in many fields including biology, medicine, and marketing. Behavior can be recorded as a sequence of actions performed by an individual over a given time period. This…
Computing optimal conditional reachability probabilities in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is tractable by a reduction to reachability probabilities. Yet, this reduction yields cyclic, challenging MDPs that are often notoriously hard to…
In this paper, we focus on numerical approximations of Piecewise Diffusion Markov Processes (PDifMPs), particularly when the explicit flow maps are unavailable. Our approach is based on the thinning method for modelling the jump mechanism…
In this paper, we propose a low rank approximation method for efficiently solving stochastic partial differential equations. Specifically, our method utilizes a novel low rank approximation of the stiffness matrices, which can significantly…
Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…
In a variety of applications it is important to extract information from a probability measure $\mu$ on an infinite dimensional space. Examples include the Bayesian approach to inverse problems and possibly conditioned) continuous time…