Related papers: Maximizing the Conditional Expected Reward for Rea…
The window mean-payoff objective strengthens the classical mean-payoff objective by computing the mean-payoff over a finite window that slides along an infinite path. Two variants have been considered: in one variant, the maximum window…
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…
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…
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…
We consider a discrete-time Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces. The performance criterion is to maximize a total expected {utility determined by unbounded return function. It is shown the existence of optimal…
In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…
We consider the problem: is the optimal expected total reward to reach a goal state in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) below a given threshold? We tackle this -- generally undecidable -- problem by computing…
We consider the problem of computing the value and an optimal strategy for minimizing the expected termination time in one-counter Markov decision processes. Since the value may be irrational and an optimal strategy may be rather…
A standard objective in partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is to find a policy that maximizes the expected discounted-sum payoff. However, such policies may still permit unlikely but highly undesirable outcomes, which…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple limit-average (or mean-payoff) objectives. There exist two different views: (i) the expectation semantics, where the goal is to optimize the expected mean-payoff objective, and (ii)…
In this work, we study discrete-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) under constraints with Borel state and action spaces and where all the performance functions have the same form of the expected total reward (ETR) criterion over the…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) with rewards are a widespread and well-studied model for systems that make both probabilistic and nondeterministic choices. A fundamental result about MDPs is that their minimal and maximal expected rewards…
Partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with discounted-sum payoff are a standard framework to model a wide range of problems related to decision making under uncertainty. Traditionally, the goal has been to obtain policies…
Markov automata combine non-determinism, probabilistic branching, and exponentially distributed delays. This compositional variant of continuous-time Markov decision processes is used in reliability engineering, performance evaluation and…
We consider the problem of approximating the reachability probabilities in Markov decision processes (MDP) with uncountable (continuous) state and action spaces. While there are algorithms that, for special classes of such MDP, provide a…
We present a dynamic programming-based solution to the problem of maximizing the probability of attaining a target set before hitting a cemetery set for a discrete-time Markov control process. Under mild hypotheses we establish that there…
This paper presents a wp-style calculus for obtaining expectations on the outcomes of (mutually) recursive probabilistic programs. We provide several proof rules to derive one-- and two--sided bounds for such expectations, and show the…
This paper deals with the unconstrained and constrained cases for continuous-time Markov decision processes under the finite-horizon expected total cost criterion. The state space is denumerable and the transition and cost rates are allowed…
This paper is devoted to studying constrained continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the class of randomized policies depending on state histories. The transition rates may be unbounded, the reward and costs are admitted to be…
This paper addresses objectives tailored to the risk-averse optimization of accumulated rewards in Markov decision processes (MDPs). The studied objectives require maximizing the expected value of the accumulated rewards minus a penalty…