Related papers: Proper Policies in Infinite-State Stochastic Short…
Recent results in the study of the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation have led to the discovery of a formulation of the value function as a linear Partial Differential Equation (PDE) for stochastic nonlinear systems with a mild…
This paper presents sufficient conditions for optimal control of systems with dynamics given by a linear operator, in order to obtain an explicit solution to the Bellman equation that can be calculated in a distributed fashion. Further, the…
An optimal control problem with a time-parameter is considered. The functional to be optimized includes the maximum over time-horizon reached by a function of the state variable, and so an $L^\infty$-term. In addition to the classical…
We consider the problem of the optimal trading strategy in the presence of linear costs, and with a strict cap on the allowed position in the market. Using Bellman's backward recursion method, we show that the optimal strategy is to switch…
We consider stochastic control models with Borel spaces and universally measurable policies. For such models the standard policy iteration is known to have difficult measurability issues and cannot be carried out in general. We present a…
This paper considers linear-quadratic control of a non-linear dynamical system subject to arbitrary cost. I show that for this class of stochastic control problems the non-linear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation can be transformed into a…
Calculating optimal policies is known to be computationally difficult for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces. This paper studies finite-state approximations of discrete time Markov decision processes with…
The optimal control of problems that are constrained by partial differential equations with uncertainties and with uncertain controls is addressed. The Lagrangian that defines the problem is postulated in terms of stochastic functions, with…
We present a novel class of minimax optimal control problems with positive dynamics, linear objective function and homogeneous constraints. The proposed problem class can be analyzed with dynamic programming and an explicit solution to the…
We study reinforcement learning in stochastic path (SP) problems. The goal in these problems is to maximize the expected sum of rewards until the agent reaches a terminal state. We provide the first regret guarantees in this general problem…
The Bellman equation and its continuous-time counterpart, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation, serve as necessary conditions for optimality in reinforcement learning and optimal control. While the value function is known to be the…
We propose a model for path-planning based on a single performance metric that accurately accounts for the the potential (spatially inhomogeneous) cost of breakdowns and repairs. These random breakdowns (or system faults) happen at a known,…
Following the recent resurgence in establishing linear control theoretic benchmarks for reinforcement leaning (RL)-based policy optimization (PO) for complex dynamical systems with continuous state and action spaces, an optimal control…
This paper concerns discrete-time infinite-horizon stochastic control systems with Borel state and action spaces and universally measurable policies. We study optimization problems on strategic measures induced by the policies in these…
We consider a multi-class G/G/1 queue with a finite shared buffer. There is task admission and server scheduling control which aims to minimize the cost which consists of holding and rejection components. We construct a policy that is…
The minimization of energy-like cost functionals is addressed in the context of optimal control problems. For a general class of dynamical systems, with possibly unstable and nonlinear free dynamics, it is shown that a sequence of solutions…
This paper focuses on managing the cost of deliberation before action. In many problems, the overall quality of the solution reflects costs incurred and resources consumed in deliberation as well as the cost and benefit of execution, when…
We consider an infinite horizon portfolio problem with borrowing constraints, in which an agent receives labor income which adjusts to financial market shocks in a path dependent way. This path-dependency is the novelty of the model, and…
In this paper we develop necessary conditions for optimality, in the form of the Pontryagin maximum principle, for the optimal control problem of a class of infinite dimensional evolution equations with delay in the state. In the cost…
In this article, we discuss two algorithms tailored to discrete-time deterministic finite-horizon nonlinear optimal control problems or so-called deterministic trajectory optimization problems. Both algorithms can be derived from an…