Related papers: Memoryless Exact Solutions for Deterministic MDPs …
A labelled Markov decision process (MDP) is a labelled Markov chain with nondeterminism; i.e., together with a strategy a labelled MDP induces a labelled Markov chain. The model is related to interval Markov chains. Motivated by…
Sample-efficient exploration is crucial not only for discovering rewarding experiences but also for adapting to environment changes in a task-agnostic fashion. A principled treatment of the problem of optimal input synthesis for system…
We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and every transition is associated with an integer cost. The optimization objective we study asks to minimize the expected total cost till the…
To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…
The ability to compute reward-optimal policies for given and known finite Markov decision processes (MDPs) underpins a variety of applications across planning, controller synthesis, and verification. However, we often want policies (1) to…
We prove that the simplex method with the highest gain/most-negative-reduced cost pivoting rule converges in strongly polynomial time for deterministic Markov decision processes (MDPs) regardless of the discount factor. For a deterministic…
Policy optimization is a widely-used method in reinforcement learning. Due to its local-search nature, however, theoretical guarantees on global optimality often rely on extra assumptions on the Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that bypass…
Canonical models of Markov decision processes (MDPs) usually consider geometric discounting based on a constant discount factor. While this standard modeling approach has led to many elegant results, some recent studies indicate the…
Bayesian approaches developed to solve the optimal design of sequential experiments are mathematically elegant but computationally challenging. Recently, techniques using amortization have been proposed to make these Bayesian approaches…
This paper presents an axiomatic approach to finite Markov decision processes where the discount rate is zero. One of the principal difficulties in the no discounting case is that, even if attention is restricted to stationary policies, a…
We propose a new approach to the problem of searching a space of policies for a Markov decision process (MDP) or a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), given a model. Our approach is based on the following observation: Any…
Markov decision process (MDP) is a decision making framework where a decision maker is interested in maximizing the expected discounted value of a stream of rewards received at future stages at various states which are visited according to…
We present new algorithms for computing and approximating bisimulation metrics in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Bisimulation metrics are an elegant formalism that capture behavioral equivalence between states and provide strong…
Many real-world robot learning problems, such as pick-and-place or arriving at a destination, can be seen as a problem of reaching a goal state as soon as possible. These problems, when formulated as episodic reinforcement learning tasks,…
We optimize finite horizon multi-agent reach-avoid Markov decision process (MDP) via \emph{local feedback policies}. The global feedback policy solution yields global optimality but its communication complexity, memory usage and computation…
The goal of this paper is to analyze distributional Markov Decision Processes as a class of control problems in which the objective is to learn policies that steer the distribution of a cumulative reward toward a prescribed target law,…
In the optimization of dynamic systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers the peak Constrained Markov Decision Process (PCMDP), where…
Algorithmic decisions made by machine learning models in high-stakes domains may have lasting impacts over time. However, naive applications of standard fairness criterion in static settings over temporal domains may lead to delayed and…
This paper shows that the optimal policy and value functions of a Markov Decision Process (MDP), either discounted or not, can be captured by a finite-horizon undiscounted Optimal Control Problem (OCP), even if based on an inexact model.…
In Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), the reward obtained in a state depends on the properties of the last state and action. This state dependency makes it difficult to reward more interesting long-term behaviors, such as always closing a…