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Abstraction of Markov Decision Processes is a useful tool for solving complex problems, as it can ignore unimportant aspects of an environment, simplifying the process of learning an optimal policy. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm…
We study an approximation method for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with continuous spaces. Belief MDP reduction, which has been the standard approach to study POMDPs requires rigorous approximation methods for…
The Partially Observable Markov Decision Process has long been recognized as a rich framework for real-world planning and control problems, especially in robotics. However exact solutions in this framework are typically computationally…
This paper considers the permissive supervisor synthesis for probabilistic systems modeled as Markov Decision Processes (MDP). Such systems are prevalent in power grids, transportation networks, communication networks and robotics. Unlike…
In these notes we will tackle the problem of finding optimal policies for Markov decision processes (MDPs) which are not fully known to us. Our intention is to slowly transition from an offline setting to an online (learning) setting.…
Many processes, such as discrete event systems in engineering or population dynamics in biology, evolve in discrete space and continuous time. We consider the problem of optimal decision making in such discrete state and action space…
In this work we investigate an importance sampling approach for evaluating policies for a structurally time-varying factored Markov decision process (MDP), i.e. the policy's value is estimated with a high-probability confidence interval. In…
Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a standard model for agents making decisions in uncertain environments. Most work on POMDPs focuses on synthesizing strategies based on the available capabilities. However, system…
We propose and analyze a temporal concatenation heuristic for solving large-scale finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP), which divides the MDP into smaller sub-problems along the time horizon and generates an overall solution by…
Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) have attracted significant interest due to their ability to protect MDPs from poor out-of-sample performance in the presence of ambiguity. In contrast to classical MDPs, which account for…
Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) remains a central challenge in sequential decision-making, especially when dealing with large state spaces and long-term optimization criteria. A key step in Bellman dynamic programming algorithms is…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a canonical model to reason about decision making within a stochastic environment. We study a fundamental class of infinite MDPs: one-counter MDPs (OC-MDPs). They extend finite MDPs via an associated…
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…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…
The transition kernel of a continuous-state-action Markov decision process (MDP) admits a natural tensor structure. This paper proposes a tensor-inspired unsupervised learning method to identify meaningful low-dimensional state and action…
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…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are formal models commonly used in sequential decision-making. MDPs capture the stochasticity that may arise, for instance, from imprecise actuators via probabilities in the transition function. However, in…
The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…
We consider a finite-state partially observable Markov decision problem (POMDP) with an infinite horizon and a discounted cost, and we propose a new method for computing a cost function approximation that is based on features and…
Learning-based approaches to verifying unknown Markov decision processes (MDPs) often employ uncertain MDPs. These models use, for example, confidence intervals to capture transition uncertainty and allow synthesis of policies that are…