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Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a fundamental model for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. However, many verification and synthesis problems for POMDPs are undecidable or intractable. Most prominently,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Nathanaël Fijalkow , Arka Ghosh , Roman Kniazev , Guillermo A. Pérez , Pierre Vandenhove

We consider a hidden Markov model with multiple observation processes, one of which is chosen at each point in time by a policy---a deterministic function of the information state---and attempt to determine which policy minimises the…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-03-17 James Y. Zhao

We study qualitative multi-objective reachability problems for Ordered Branching Markov Decision Processes (OBMDPs), or equivalently context-free MDPs, building on prior results for single-target reachability on Branching Markov Decision…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-25 Kousha Etessami , Emanuel Martinov

Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is highly intractable in general, at least in part because the optimal policy may be infinitely large. In this paper, we explore the problem of finding the optimal policy from…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-30 Nicolas Meuleau , Kee-Eung Kim , Leslie Pack Kaelbling , Anthony R. Cassandra

We present a method for a certain class of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can relate the optimal policy back to one or more reward sources in the environment. For a given initial state, without fully computing the value function,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Josh Bertram , Peng Wei

This paper considers the problem of finding strategies that satisfy a mixture of sure and threshold objectives in Markov decision processes. We focus on a single $\omega$-regular objective expressed as parity that must be surely met while…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-05 Raphaël Berthon , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Tobias Winkler

We study the synthesis of a policy in a Markov decision process (MDP) following which an agent reaches a target state in the MDP while minimizing its total discounted cost. The problem combines a reachability criterion with a discounted…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-18 Yagiz Savas , Christos K. Verginis , Michael Hibbard , Ufuk Topcu

Computing optimal conditional reachability probabilities in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is tractable by a reduction to reachability probabilities. Yet, this reduction yields cyclic, challenging MDPs that are often notoriously hard to…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Milan Češka , Sebastian Junges , Luko van der Maas , Filip Macák , Tim Quatmann

We consider the policy synthesis problem for continuous-state controlled Markov processes evolving in discrete time, when the specification is given as a B\"uchi condition (visit a set of states infinitely often). We decompose computation…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-02-17 Rupak Majumdar , Kaushik Mallik , Sadegh Soudjani

Although average gain optimality is a commonly adopted performance measure in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), it is often too asymptotic. Further incorporating measures of immediate losses leads to the hierarchy of bias optimalities, all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Victor Boone , Adrienne Tuynman

A labelled Markov decision process (MDP) is a labelled Markov chain with nondeterminism; i.e., together with a strategy a labelled MDP induces a labelled Markov chain. The model is related to interval Markov chains. Motivated by…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-01 Stefan Kiefer , Qiyi Tang

Decision-making problems in uncertain or stochastic domains are often formulated as Markov decision processes (MDPs). Policy iteration (PI) is a popular algorithm for searching over policy-space, the size of which is exponential in the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-30 Yishay Mansour , Satinder Singh

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

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Nicole Bäuerle , Alexander Glauner

We consider imperfect information stochastic games where we require the players to use pure (i.e. non randomised) strategies. We consider reachability, safety, B\"uchi and co-B\"uchi objectives, and investigate the existence of…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-03-28 Arnaud Carayol , Christof Löding , Olivier Serre

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and every transition is associated with an integer cost. The optimization objective we study asks to minimize the expected total cost till the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-11-17 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Raghav Gupta , Ayush Kanodia

Markov automata combine non-determinism, probabilistic branching, and exponentially distributed delays. This compositional variant of continuous-time Markov decision processes is used in reliability engineering, performance evaluation and…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-05-11 Tim Quatmann , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen

We study the time-bounded reachability problem for continuous-time Markov decision processes (CTMDPs) and games (CTMGs). Existing techniques for this problem use discretisation techniques to break time into discrete intervals, and optimal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-07-11 John Fearnley , Markus Rabe , Sven Schewe , Lijun Zhang

We investigate the classical active pure exploration problem in Markov Decision Processes, where the agent sequentially selects actions and, from the resulting system trajectory, aims at identifying the best policy as fast as possible. We…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-26 Aymen Al Marjani , Aurélien Garivier , Alexandre Proutiere

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns