Related papers: Active Exploration in Markov Decision Processes

Advances in mobile computing technologies have made it possible to monitor and apply data-driven interventions across complex systems in real time. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the primary model for sequential decision problems with…

General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small finite state Markov Decision Processes…

Markov Decision Process (MDP) presents a mathematical framework to formulate the learning processes of agents in reinforcement learning. MDP is limited by the Markovian assumption that a reward only depends on the immediate state and…

In most applications of model-based Markov decision processes, the parameters for the unknown underlying model are often estimated from the empirical data. Due to noise, the policy learnedfrom the estimated model is often far from the…

Sequential decisions in volatile, high-stakes settings require more than maximizing expected return; they require principled uncertainty management. This paper presents the Uncertainty-Aware Markov Decision Process (UAMDP), a unified…

This paper puts forward the concept that learning to take safe actions in unknown environments, even with probability one guarantees, can be achieved without the need for an unbounded number of exploratory trials. This is indeed possible,…

General-purpose agents require fine-grained controls and rich sensory inputs to perform a wide range of tasks. However, this complexity often leads to intractable decision-making. Traditionally, agents are provided with task-specific action…

We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…

The standard Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation hinges on the assumption that an action is executed immediately after it was chosen. However, assuming it is often unrealistic and can lead to catastrophic failures in applications such…

In many sequential decision-making problems, the goal is to optimize a utility function while satisfying a set of constraints on different utilities. This learning problem is formalized through Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs).…

Learning a Markov Decision Process (MDP) from a fixed batch of trajectories is a non-trivial task whose outcome's quality depends on both the amount and the diversity of the sampled regions of the state-action space. Yet, many MDPs are…

A Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a popular model for reinforcement learning. However, its commonly used assumption of stationary dynamics and rewards is too stringent and fails to hold in adversarial, nonstationary, or multi-agent…

Safe reinforcement learning has been a promising approach for optimizing the policy of an agent that operates in safety-critical applications. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, SNO-MDP, that explores and optimizes Markov decision…

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…

Long-run average optimization problems for Markov decision processes (MDPs) require constructing policies with optimal steady-state behavior, i.e., optimal limit frequency of visits to the states. However, such policies may suffer from…

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) model is one of the most classical models to study decision-making in an uncertain environment. In this model, a player chooses one of $K$ possible arms of a bandit machine to play at each time step, where the…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Mean payoff (or long-run average reward) provides a mathematically elegant formalism to express performance related…

Planning plays an important role in the broad class of decision theory. Planning has drawn much attention in recent work in the robotics and sequential decision making areas. Recently, Reinforcement Learning (RL), as an agent-environment…