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This paper investigates a class of optimal control problems associated with Markov processes with local state information. The decision-maker has only local access to a subset of a state vector information as often encountered in…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-12 Guanze Peng , Veeraruna Kavitha , Qunayan Zhu

We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation and finite-memory approximations for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs). We first present an algorithm for the value evaluation of finite-memory feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-22 Ali Devran Kara

We study computational and statistical aspects of learning Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs). In this model, the learner interacts with an MDP drawn at the beginning of each epoch from an unknown mixture of MDPs. To sidestep known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Fan Chen , Constantinos Daskalakis , Noah Golowich , Alexander Rakhlin

Regularization of control policies using entropy can be instrumental in adjusting predictability of real-world systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from, e.g., cybersecurity, which aims at maximal unpredictability, to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-18 Menno van Zutphen , Giannis Delimpaltadakis , Maurice Heemels , Duarte Antunes

We consider the framework of transfer-entropy-regularized Markov Decision Process (TERMDP) in which the weighted sum of the classical state-dependent cost and the transfer entropy from the state random process to the control random process…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-29 Takashi Tanaka , Henrik Sandberg , Mikael Skoglund

We introduce a new approximate solution technique for first-order Markov decision processes (FOMDPs). Representing the value function linearly w.r.t. a set of first-order basis functions, we compute suitable weights by casting the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Scott Sanner , Craig Boutilier

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and positive integer costs associated with every transition. The traditional optimization objective (stochastic shortest path) asks to minimize…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-05-12 Tomáš Brázdil , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Anchit Gupta , Petr Novotný

Markov decision processes (MDP) are finite-state systems with both strategic and probabilistic choices. After fixing a strategy, an MDP produces a sequence of probability distributions over states. The sequence is eventually synchronizing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-11-01 Laurent Doyen , Thierry Massart , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) offer a fairly generic and powerful framework to discuss the notion of optimal policies for dynamic systems, in particular when the dynamics are stochastic. However, computing the optimal policy of an MDP…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-24 Dirk Reinhardt , Akhil S. Anand , Shambhuraj Sawant , Sebastien Gros

We study policy optimization in an infinite horizon, $\gamma$-discounted constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). Our objective is to return a policy that achieves large expected reward with a small constraint violation. We consider the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-12 Arushi Jain , Sharan Vaswani , Reza Babanezhad , Csaba Szepesvari , Doina Precup

Motivated by wide-ranging applications such as video delivery over networks using Multiple Description Codes, congestion control, and inventory management, we study the state-tracking of a Markovian random process with a known transition…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2017-03-06 Parisa Mansourifard , Tara Javidi , Bhaskar Krishnamachari

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-19 Hoang Nam Nguyen , Abdel Lisser , Vikas Vikram Singh

The formal verification and controller synthesis for Markov decision processes that evolve over uncountable state spaces are computationally hard and thus generally rely on the use of approximations. In this work, we consider the…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-11-28 Sofie Haesaert , Sadegh Soudjani , Alessandro Abate

We study the problem of zero-delay coding for the transmission of a Markov source over a noisy channel with feedback and present a reinforcement learning solution which is guaranteed to achieve near-optimality. To this end, we formulate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Liam Cregg , Fady Alajaji , Serdar Yuksel

We consider finite-state Markov decision processes with the combined Energy-MeanPayoff objective. The controller tries to avoid running out of energy while simultaneously attaining a strictly positive mean payoff in a second dimension. We…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Mohan Dantam , Richard Mayr

We propose a general framework for entropy-regularized average-reward reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs). Our approach is based on extending the linear-programming formulation of policy optimization in MDPs to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-23 Gergely Neu , Anders Jonsson , Vicenç Gómez

We investigate the problem of synthesizing optimal control policies for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with both qualitative and quantitative objectives. Specifically, our goal is to achieve a given linear temporal logic (LTL) task with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-08 Yu Chen , Shaoyuan Li , Xiang Yin

Markov Decision Problems (MDPs) provide a foundational framework for modelling sequential decision-making across diverse domains, guided by optimality criteria such as discounted and average rewards. However, these criteria have inherent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Dibyangshu Mukherjee , Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan

This work considers the sample complexity of obtaining an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in an average reward Markov Decision Process (AMDP), given access to a generative model (simulator). When the ground-truth MDP is weakly communicating,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-02 Jinghan Wang , Mengdi Wang , Lin F. Yang

Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) extend standard Markov decision processes (MDPs) to account for uncertainty in the transition probabilities. RMDPs have an uncertainty set that defines a set of possible transition functions, each of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Marnix Suilen , Guillermo A. Pérez