Related papers: Hierarchical Linearly-Solvable Markov Decision Pro…

Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is widely used to specify high-level objectives for system policies, and it is highly desirable for autonomous systems to learn the optimal policy with respect to such specifications. However, learning the…

In a discounted reward Markov Decision Process (MDP), the objective is to find the optimal value function, i.e., the value function corresponding to an optimal policy. This problem reduces to solving a functional equation known as the…

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…

Unlike the standard Reinforcement Learning (RL) model, many real-world tasks are non-Markovian, whose rewards are predicated on state history rather than solely on the current state. Solving a non-Markovian task, frequently applied in…

In this paper, we develop a safe decision-making method for self-driving cars in a multi-lane, single-agent setting. The proposed approach utilizes deep reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve a high-level policy for safe tactical…

Learning interpretable and transferable subpolicies and performing task decomposition from a single, complex task is difficult. Some traditional hierarchical reinforcement learning techniques enforce this decomposition in a top-down manner,…

This paper develops a hierarchical reinforcement learning architecture for multimission spaceflight campaign design under uncertainty, including vehicle design, infrastructure deployment planning, and space transportation scheduling. This…

The combination of exponentially large action spaces, stochastic dynamics, and long-horizon decision-making under limited resources makes Sequential Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization (SSCO) particularly challenging for reinforcement…

A common setting of reinforcement learning (RL) is a Markov decision process (MDP) in which the environment is a stochastic discrete-time dynamical system. Whereas MDPs are suitable in such applications as video-games or puzzles, physical…

In e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and TaoBao, ranking items in a search session is a typical multi-step decision-making problem. Learning to rank (LTR) methods have been widely applied to ranking problems. However, such methods often…

We propose a formulation of the stochastic cutting stock problem as a discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision process. At each decision epoch, given current inventory of items, an agent chooses in which patterns to cut objects in stock…

Recent work has led to the development of an elegant theory of Linearly Solvable Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs) and related Path-Integral Control Problems. Traditionally, MDPs have been formulated using stochastic policies and a control…

Many practical decision-making problems involve tasks whose success depends on the entire system history, rather than on achieving a state with desired properties. Markovian Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches are not suitable for such…

Efficient planning of activities is essential for modern industrial assembly lines to uphold manufacturing standards, prevent project constraint violations, and achieve cost-effective operations. While exact solutions to such challenges can…

The problem of designing a rebalancing algorithm for a large-scale ridehailing system with asymmetric demand is considered here. We pose the rebalancing problem within a semi Markov decision problem (SMDP) framework with closed queues of…

Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a powerful framework for modeling sequential decision-making problems with model uncertainty. This paper proposes the first first-order framework for solving robust MDPs. Our algorithm interleaves…

We introduce an algorithm for model-based hierarchical reinforcement learning to acquire self-contained transition and reward models suitable for probabilistic planning at multiple levels of abstraction. We call this framework Planning with…

We consider episodic reinforcement learning in reward-mixing Markov decision processes (RMMDPs): at the beginning of every episode nature randomly picks a latent reward model among $M$ candidates and an agent interacts with the MDP…

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.…