Related papers: Risk-Averse Planning Under Uncertainty

Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) requires computing policies under imperfect state information. Despite recent advances, the scalability of existing POMDP solvers remains limited. Moreover, many settings…

We consider a distributionally robust Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (DR-POMDP), where the distribution of the transition-observation probabilities is unknown at the beginning of each decision period, but their realizations…

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…

We develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…

This paper studies optimal motion planning subject to motion and environment uncertainties. By modeling the system as a probabilistic labeled Markov decision process (PL-MDP), the control objective is to synthesize a finite-memory policy,…

In this paper, we propose a policy gradient method for confounded partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with continuous state and observation spaces in the offline setting. We first establish a novel identification result…

We investigate the problem of monitoring partially observable systems with nondeterministic and probabilistic dynamics. In such systems, every state may be associated with a risk, e.g., the probability of an imminent crash. During runtime,…

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide a rich framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty in stochastic domains. However, solving a POMDP is often intractable except for small problems due to their…

In this paper, we consider a class of continuous-time, continuous-space stochastic optimal control problems. Building upon recent advances in Markov chain approximation methods and sampling-based algorithms for deterministic path planning,…

Models of many real-life applications, such as queuing models of communication networks or computing systems, have a countably infinite state-space. Algorithmic and learning procedures that have been developed to produce optimal policies…

A standard objective in partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is to find a policy that maximizes the expected discounted-sum payoff. However, such policies may still permit unlikely but highly undesirable outcomes, which…

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) modeling an agent that needs a supply of a certain resource (e.g., electricity stored in batteries) to operate correctly. The resource is consumed by agent's actions and…

This work investigates the challenge of ensuring safety guarantees in the presence of uncontrollable agents, whose behaviors are stochastic and depend on both their own and the system's states. We present a neural model predictive control…

Most exact algorithms for general partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) use a form of dynamic programming in which a piecewise-linear and convex representation of one value function is transformed into another. We examine…

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are the standard framework for decision-making under uncertainty. While sampling-based methods scale well, they lack formal correctness guarantees, making them unsuitable for…

We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…

We study an optimal process control problem with multiple assignable causes. The process is initially in-control but is subject to random transition to one of multiple out-of-control states due to assignable causes. The objective is to find…

In Passive POMDPs actions do not affect the world state, but still incur costs. When the agent is bounded by information-processing constraints, it can only keep an approximation of the belief. We present a variational principle for the…

Policy-gradient methods have received increased attention recently as a mechanism for learning to act in partially observable environments. They have shown promise for problems admitting memoryless policies but have been less successful…

We show that for several variations of partially observable Markov decision processes, polynomial-time algorithms for finding control policies are unlikely to or simply don't have guarantees of finding policies within a constant factor or a…