English
Related papers

Related papers: On Skolem-hardness and saturation points in Markov…

200 papers

In this paper the connection between stochastic optimal control and reinforcement learning is investigated. Our main motivation is to apply importance sampling to sampling rare events which can be reformulated as an optimal control problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-16 Jannes Quer , Enric Ribera Borrell

Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are receiving much attention in learning a robust policy which is less sensitive to environment changes. There are an increasing number of works analyzing sample-efficiency of robust MDPs. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Wenhao Yang , Han Wang , Tadashi Kozuno , Scott M. Jordan , Zhihua Zhang

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Maximilian Nägele , Jan Olle , Thomas Fösel , Remmy Zen , Florian Marquardt

In this paper, we consider a continuous-time Markov decision process (CTMDP) in Borel spaces, where the certainty equivalent with respect to the exponential utility of the total undiscounted cost is to be minimized. The cost rate is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-11-29 Yi Zhang

We consider the problem of computing minimum and maximum probabilities of satisfying an $\omega$-regular property in a bounded-parameter Markov decision process (BMDP). BMDP arise from Markov decision processes (MDP) by allowing for…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-07-28 Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer , Maximilian Weininger

We consider the problem of minimizing a certainty equivalent of the total or discounted cost over a finite and an infinite time horizon which is generated by a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). The certainty equivalent…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-07-21 Nicole Bäuerle , Ulrich Rieder

We consider the problem of controlling a Markov decision process (MDP) with a large state space, so as to minimize average cost. Since it is intractable to compete with the optimal policy for large scale problems, we pursue the more modest…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-02-28 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Alan Malek

In this paper we explore several approaches for sampling weight vectors in the context of weighted sum scalarisation approaches for solving multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. This established method converts a multi-objective…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-18 Aled Williams , Yilun Cai

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…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-10-10 Zhi Chen , Pengqian Yu , William B. Haskell

We study the problem of synthesizing a policy that maximizes the entropy of a Markov decision process (MDP) subject to a temporal logic constraint. Such a policy minimizes the predictability of the paths it generates, or dually, maximizes…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-17 Yagiz Savas , Melkior Ornik , Murat Cubuktepe , Mustafa O. Karabag , Ufuk Topcu

This paper is devoted to studying constrained continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the class of randomized policies depending on state histories. The transition rates may be unbounded, the reward and costs are admitted to be…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-01-04 Xianping Guo , Xinyuan Song

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a mathematical framework for modeling sequential decision making under uncertainty. The classical approaches for solving MDPs are well known and have been widely studied, some of which rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-18 Joshua R. Bertram , Xuxi Yang , Peng Wei

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide an elegant mathematical framework for modeling complex decision and planning problems in stochastic domains in which states of the system are observable only indirectly, via a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-06-02 M. Hauskrecht

We consider a multi-source relaying system where independent sources randomly generate status update packets which are sent to the destination with the aid of a relay through unreliable links. We develop transmission scheduling policies to…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-10 Abolfazl Zakeri , Mohammad Moltafet , Markus Leinonen , Marian Codreanu

This paper considers large families of Markov chains (MCs) that are defined over a set of parameters with finite discrete domains. Such families occur in software product lines, planning under partial observability, and sketching of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-03-27 Milan Ceska , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model for decision making under uncertainty. They exhibit non-deterministic choice as well as probabilistic uncertainty. Traditionally, verification algorithms assume exact knowledge of the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-18 Tobias Meggendorfer , Maximilian Weininger , Patrick Wienhöft

We study the policy testing problem in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the fixed-confidence setting under a generative model with static sampling. The goal is to decide whether the value of a given policy exceeds a specified…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-21 Kaito Ariu , Po-An Wang , Alexandre Proutiere , Kenshi Abe

We study the evaluation of a policy under best- and worst-case perturbations to a Markov decision process (MDP), using transition observations from the original MDP, whether they are generated under the same or a different policy. This is…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Andrew Bennett , Nathan Kallus , Miruna Oprescu , Wen Sun , Kaiwen Wang

Probabilistic model checking aims to prove whether a Markov decision process (MDP) satisfies a temporal logic specification. The underlying methods rely on an often unrealistic assumption that the MDP is precisely known. Consequently,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-07-02 Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu

Robust optimization provides a principled and unified framework to model many problems in modern operations research and computer science applications, such as risk measures minimization and adversarially robust machine learning. To use a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-04 Hao Hao , Peter Zhang