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We propose a new, nonparametric approach to learning and representing transition dynamics in Markov decision processes (MDPs), which can be combined easily with dynamic programming methods for policy optimisation and value estimation. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-06-22 Steffen Grunewalder , Guy Lever , Luca Baldassarre , Massi Pontil , Arthur Gretton

Multi-task representation learning (MTRL) is an approach that learns shared latent representations across related tasks, facilitating collaborative learning that improves the overall learning efficiency. This paper studies MTRL for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yaoze Guo , Shana Moothedath

It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-16 Guido Montufar , Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi , Nihat Ay

In this paper, we consider a Markov decision process (MDP), where the ego agent has a nominal objective to pursue while needs to hide its state from detection by an adversary. After formulating the problem, we first propose a value…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-08-22 Nan Li , Ilya Kolmanovsky , Anouck Girard

We study the setting of \emph{performative reinforcement learning} where the deployed policy affects both the reward, and the transition of the underlying Markov decision process. Prior work~\parencite{MTR23} has addressed this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

Suppose an agent is in a (possibly unknown) Markov Decision Process in the absence of a reward signal, what might we hope that an agent can efficiently learn to do? This work studies a broad class of objectives that are defined solely as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-29 Elad Hazan , Sham M. Kakade , Karan Singh , Abby Van Soest

Reinforcement learning (RL) in recommendation systems offers the potential to optimize recommendations for long-term user engagement. However, the environment often involves large state and action spaces, which makes it hard to efficiently…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-09-20 Yijia Dai , Wen Sun

Long-term fairness is an important factor of consideration in designing and deploying learning-based decision systems in high-stake decision-making contexts. Recent work has proposed the use of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to formulate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Eric Yang Yu , Zhizhen Qin , Min Kyung Lee , Sicun Gao

We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-11 Aymen Al Marjani , Alexandre Proutiere

Power grid load scheduling is a critical task that ensures the balance between electricity generation and consumption while minimizing operational costs and maintaining grid stability. Traditional optimization methods often struggle with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Dongwen Luo

We investigate the problem of designing optimal stealthy poisoning attacks on the control channel of Markov decision processes (MDPs). This research is motivated by the recent interest of the research community for adversarial and poisoning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-09-16 Alessio Russo , Alexandre Proutiere

This paper presents a framework to tackle constrained combinatorial optimization problems using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL). To this end, we extend the Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) theory in order to deal with constraints in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Ruben Solozabal , Josu Ceberio , Martin Takáč

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

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Alekh Agarwal , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Gaurav Mahajan

As representation learning becomes a powerful technique to reduce sample complexity in reinforcement learning (RL) in practice, theoretical understanding of its advantage is still limited. In this paper, we theoretically characterize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Yuan Cheng , Songtao Feng , Jing Yang , Hong Zhang , Yingbin Liang

In many operations management problems, we need to make decisions sequentially to minimize the cost while satisfying certain constraints. One modeling approach to study such problems is constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). When…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-01-27 Yi Chen , Jing Dong , Zhaoran Wang

Planning can often be simpli ed by decomposing the task into smaller tasks arranged hierarchically. Charlin et al. [4] recently showed that the hierarchy discovery problem can be framed as a non-convex optimization problem. However, the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-06-18 Marc Toussaint , Laurent Charlin , Pascal Poupart

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Tomas Brazdil , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Petr Novotny , Jiri Vahala

Lazy graph search algorithms are efficient at solving motion planning problems where edge evaluation is the computational bottleneck. These algorithms work by lazily computing the shortest potentially feasible path, evaluating edges along…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-07-18 Mohak Bhardwaj , Sanjiban Choudhury , Byron Boots , Siddhartha Srinivasa

Lazy graph search algorithms are efficient at solving motion planning problems where edge evaluation is the computational bottleneck. These algorithms work by lazily computing the shortest potentially feasible path, evaluating edges along…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-10-12 Mohak Bhardwaj , Sanjiban Choudhury , Byron Boots , Siddhartha Srinivasa