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We address the problem of finding the optimal policy of a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) using a gradient descent-based algorithm. Previous results have shown that a primal-dual approach can achieve an $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

We study the sequential decision making problem of maximizing the expected total reward while satisfying a constraint on the expected total utility. We employ the natural policy gradient method to solve the discounted infinite-horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Dongsheng Ding , Kaiqing Zhang , Jiali Duan , Tamer Başar , Mihailo R. Jovanović

One of the key approaches to save samples in reinforcement learning (RL) is to use knowledge from an approximate model such as its simulator. However, how much does an approximate model help to learn a near-optimal policy of the true…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-15 Fei Feng , Wotao Yin , Lin F. Yang

In probably approximately correct (PAC) reinforcement learning (RL), an agent is required to identify an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with probability $1-\delta$. While minimax optimal algorithms exist for this problem, its instance-dependent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Aymen Al-Marjani , Emilie Kaufmann

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-02-01 Ian Post , Yinyu Ye

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-14 Roshan Shariff , Csaba Szepesvári

We investigate the problem of optimal control synthesis for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), addressing both qualitative and quantitative objectives. Specifically, we require the system to satisfy a qualitative task specified by a Linear…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-19 Yu Chen , Xuanyuan Yin , Shaoyuan Li , Xiang Yin

We consider discounted infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward while satisfying expected cumulative constraints. Motivated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Tingting Ni , Maryam Kamgarpour

In this manuscript, we introduce a novel Decision Flow (DF) framework for sampling decisions from a target distribution while incorporating additional guidance from a prior sampler. DF can be viewed as an AI-driven algorithmic reincarnation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Michael Chertkov , Sungsoo Ahn , Hamidreza Behjoo

Diffusion models excel at sampling from complex, unnormalized distributions. In this work, we extend Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning (ME-RL) to diffusion processes, enabling sampling from the optimal policy trajectory distribution.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Sebastian Sanokowski , Kaustubh Patil

Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-06 Vincent Corlay , Jean-Christophe Sibel

We consider the problem of constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) where an agent interacts with a unichain Markov Decision Process. At every interaction, the agent obtains a reward. Further, there are $K$ cost functions. The agent aims…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Mridul Agarwal , Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal

Modern tasks in reinforcement learning have large state and action spaces. To deal with them efficiently, one often uses predefined feature mapping to represent states and actions in a low-dimensional space. In this paper, we study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-24 Dongruo Zhou , Jiafan He , Quanquan Gu

We study infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the decision maker evaluates each of her strategies by aggregating the infinite stream of expected stage-rewards. The crucial feature of our approach is that the aggregation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-05 János Flesch , Arkadi Predtetchinski , William D Sudderth , Xavier Venel

We study the computational complexity of central analysis problems for One-Counter Markov Decision Processes (OC-MDPs), a class of finitely-presented, countable-state MDPs. OC-MDPs are equivalent to a controlled extension of (discrete-time)…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-09-11 Tomáš Brázdil , Václav Brožek , Kousha Etessami , Antonín Kučera , Dominik Wojtczak

We study the reinforcement learning problem for discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under the tabular setting. We propose a model-based algorithm named UCBVI-$\gamma$, which is based on the \emph{optimism in the face of uncertainty…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Jiafan He , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic and asymptotic performances of the optimal robust policy and value function of robust Markov Decision Processes(MDPs), where the optimal robust policy and value function are solved only from a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-16 Wenhao Yang , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Safety is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in real-world applications such as autonomous driving, robotics, and healthcare. To address this, Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are commonly used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Chang Liu , Yunfan Li , Lin F. Yang

We consider the problem of controlling a Markov decision process (MDP) with a large state space, so as to minimize average cost. Since it is intractable to compete with the optimal policy for large scale problems, we pursue the more modest…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-02-28 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Alan Malek

We consider parametric version of fixed-delay continuous-time Markov chains (or equivalently deterministic and stochastic Petri nets, DSPN) where fixed-delay transitions are specified by parameters, rather than concrete values. Our goal is…

Performance · Computer Science 2016-04-18 Tomáš Brázdil , Ľuboš Korenčiak , Jan Krčál , Petr Novotný , Vojtěch Řehák