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One of the most widely used methods for solving average cost MDP problems is the value iteration method. This method, however, is often computationally impractical and restricted in size of solvable MDP problems. We propose acceleration…
The reinforcement learning algorithm SARSA combined with linear function approximation has been shown to converge for infinite horizon discounted Markov decision problems (MDPs). In this paper, we investigate the convergence of the…
A classic solution technique for Markov decision processes (MDP) and stochastic games (SG) is value iteration (VI). Due to its good practical performance, this approximative approach is typically preferred over exact techniques, even though…
Value iteration is a commonly used and empirically competitive method in solving many Markov decision process problems. However, it is known that value iteration has only pseudo-polynomial complexity in general. We establish a somewhat…
While there is an extensive body of research on the analysis of Value Iteration (VI) for discounted cumulative-reward MDPs, prior work on analyzing VI for (undiscounted) average-reward MDPs has been limited, and most prior results focus on…
Recently discovered polyhedral structures of the value function for finite state-action discounted Markov decision processes (MDP) shed light on understanding the success of reinforcement learning. We investigate the value function polytope…
Reinforcement learning (RL) agents have traditionally been tasked with maximizing the value function of a Markov decision process (MDP), either in continuous settings, with fixed discount factor $\gamma < 1$, or in episodic settings, with…
This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…
In this work, we design quantum algorithms that are more efficient than classical algorithms to solve time-dependent and finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in two distinct settings: (1) In the exact dynamics setting, where the…
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…
We introduce a new approximate solution technique for first-order Markov decision processes (FOMDPs). Representing the value function linearly w.r.t. a set of first-order basis functions, we compute suitable weights by casting the…
This paper studies an accelerated fitted value iteration (FVI) algorithm to solve high-dimensional Markov decision processes (MDPs). FVI is an approximate dynamic programming algorithm that has desirable theoretical properties. However, it…
Many sequential decision problems can be formulated as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the optimal value function (or cost-to-go function) can be shown to satisfy a monotone structure in some or all of its dimensions. When the state…
We consider approximate dynamic programming for the infinite-horizon stationary $\gamma$-discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. While in the exact case it is known that there always exists an optimal…
Contextual Markov decision processes (CMDPs) describe a class of reinforcement learning problems in which the transition kernels and reward functions can change over time with different MDPs indexed by a context variable. While CMDPs serve…
We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a risk measure of variability in cost, under the risk-aware MDPs paradigm. Previous studies showed that risk-aware MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handling risk, can be…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used in modeling decision making problems in stochastic environments. However, precise specification of the reward functions in MDPs is often very difficult. Recent approaches have focused on…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Mean payoff (or long-run average reward) provides a mathematically elegant formalism to express performance related…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a mathematical framework for modeling sequential decision making under uncertainty. The classical approaches for solving MDPs are well known and have been widely studied, some of which rely on…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…