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We study a class of multi-stage stochastic programs, which incorporate modeling features from Markov decision processes (MDPs). This class includes structured MDPs with continuous action and state spaces. We extend policy graphs to include…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-09 David P. Morton , Oscar Dowson , Bernardo K. Pagnoncelli

We study online learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with adversarial losses and stochastic hard constraints, under bandit feedback. We consider three scenarios. In the first one, we address general CMDPs, where we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), the mathematical framework underlying most algorithms in Reinforcement Learning (RL), are often used in a way that wrongfully assumes that the state of an agent's environment does not change during action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-13 Simon Ramstedt , Christopher Pal

In many real-world applications (e.g., planetary exploration, robot navigation), an autonomous agent must be able to explore a space with guaranteed safety. Most safe exploration algorithms in the field of reinforcement learning and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-09-13 Akifumi Wachi , Hiroshi Kajino , Asim Munawar

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) address the challenge of model uncertainty by optimizing the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. In this paper, we focus on the robust average-reward MDPs under the model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-19 Yue Wang , Alvaro Velasquez , George Atia , Ashley Prater-Bennette , Shaofeng Zou

We investigate online Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with adversarially changing loss functions and known transitions. We choose dynamic regret as the performance measure, defined as the performance difference between the learner and any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-29 Peng Zhao , Long-Fei Li , Zhi-Hua Zhou

This work considers the sample and computational complexity of obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in a discounted Markov Decision Process (MDP), given only access to a generative model. In this work, we study the effectiveness of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-07 Alekh Agarwal , Sham Kakade , Lin F. Yang

In many real-world applications, agents must make sequential decisions in environments where conditions are subject to change due to various exogenous factors. These non-stationary environments pose significant challenges to traditional…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-01-17 Nathaniel S. Keplinger , Baiting Luo , Iliyas Bektas , Yunuo Zhang , Kyle Hollins Wray , Aron Laszka , Abhishek Dubey , Ayan Mukhopadhyay

This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-18 Fei Wu , Erik Demeulemeester , Jannik Matuschke

A tenet of reinforcement learning is that the agent always observes rewards. However, this is not true in many realistic settings, e.g., a human observer may not always be available to provide rewards, sensors may be limited or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Alireza Kazemipour , Simone Parisi , Matthew E. Taylor , Michael Bowling

We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays there for a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic MDPs with adversarial full-information reward feedback and unknown fixed transition kernels. We propose two model-free policy optimization algorithms, POWER and POWER++, and establish…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-02 Yingjie Fei , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Qiaomin Xie

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Marnix Suilen , Thom Badings , Eline M. Bovy , David Parker , Nils Jansen

Markov decision processes (MDP) are a well-established model for sequential decision-making in the presence of probabilities. In robust MDP (RMDP), every action is associated with an uncertainty set of probability distributions, modelling…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Tobias Meggendorfer , Maximilian Weininger , Patrick Wienhöft

A common setting of reinforcement learning (RL) is a Markov decision process (MDP) in which the environment is a stochastic discrete-time dynamical system. Whereas MDPs are suitable in such applications as video-games or puzzles, physical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Pavel Osinenko , Dmitrii Dobriborsci , Grigory Yaremenko , Georgiy Malaniya

We study reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the finite-horizon episodic setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, the inter-transition times of a continuous-time MDP are exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

A central task in control theory, artificial intelligence, and formal methods is to synthesize reward-maximizing strategies for agents that operate in partially unknown environments. In environments modeled by gray-box Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-25 Christel Baier , Clemens Dubslaff , Patrick Wienhöft , Stefan J. Kiebel

Training reinforcement learning (RL) agents using scalar reward signals is often infeasible when an environment has sparse and non-Markovian rewards. Moreover, handcrafting these reward functions before training is prone to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Alessandro Abate , Yousif Almulla , James Fox , David Hyland , Michael Wooldridge

We study reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation, where the agent works in two phases: (1) in the exploration phase, the agent interacts with the environment but cannot access the reward; and (2) in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Junkai Zhang , Weitong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) aim to handle changing or partially known system dynamics. To solve them, one typically resorts to robust optimization methods. However, this significantly increases computational complexity and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-14 Esther Derman , Yevgeniy Men , Matthieu Geist , Shie Mannor