Related papers: Scalable methods for computing state similarity in…

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…

The continuous nature of belief states in POMDPs presents significant computational challenges in learning the optimal policy. In this paper, we consider an approach that solves a Partially Observable Reinforcement Learning (PORL) problem…

This paper studies parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs), an extension to Markov decision processes (MDPs) where transitions probabilities are described by polynomials over a finite set of parameters. Fixing values for all parameters…

Regularization of control policies using entropy can be instrumental in adjusting predictability of real-world systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from, e.g., cybersecurity, which aims at maximal unpredictability, to…

In most practical applications of reinforcement learning, it is untenable to maintain direct estimates for individual states; in continuous-state systems, it is impossible. Instead, researchers often leverage state similarity (whether…

In this paper, We propose a general Riemannian proximal optimization algorithm with guaranteed convergence to solve Markov decision process (MDP) problems. To model policy functions in MDP, we employ Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and…

We study the detection problem for a finite set of Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the MDPs have the same state and action spaces but possibly different probabilistic transition functions. Any one of these MDPs could be the model for…

We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…

We study the problem of computing deterministic optimal policies for constrained Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous state and action spaces, which are widely encountered in constrained dynamical systems. Designing…

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

We propose two scheduling algorithms that seek to optimize the quality of scalably coded videos that have been stored at a video server before transmission.} The first scheduling algorithm is derived from a Markov Decision Process (MDP)…

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,…

Markov Decision Processes (MDP) is an useful framework to cast optimal sequential decision making problems. Given any MDP the aim is to find the optimal action selection mechanism i.e., the optimal policy. Typically, the optimal policy…

Motivated by wide-ranging applications such as video delivery over networks using Multiple Description Codes, congestion control, and inventory management, we study the state-tracking of a Markovian random process with a known transition…

In adaptive systems, predictors are used to anticipate changes in the systems state or behavior that may require system adaption, e.g., changing its configuration or adjusting resource allocation. Therefore, the quality of predictors is…

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…

Reinforcement learning (RL) on high-dimensional and complex problems relies on abstraction for improved efficiency and generalization. In this paper, we study abstraction in the continuous-control setting, and extend the definition of…

The goal of imitation learning is for an apprentice to learn how to behave in a stochastic environment by observing a mentor demonstrating the correct behavior. Accurate prior knowledge about the correct behavior can reduce the need for…

Regularized MDPs serve as a smooth version of original MDPs. However, biased optimal policy always exists for regularized MDPs. Instead of making the coefficient{\lambda}of regularized term sufficiently small, we propose an adaptive…

We revisit the finite time analysis of policy gradient methods in the one of the simplest settings: finite state and action MDPs with a policy class consisting of all stochastic policies and with exact gradient evaluations. There has been…