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The Whittle index, which characterizes optimal policies for controlling certain single restless bandit projects (a Markov decision process with two actions: active and passive) is the basis for a widely used heuristic index policy for the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-06 José Niño-Mora

We consider a class of restless bandit problems that finds a broad application area in reinforcement learning and stochastic optimization. We consider $N$ independent discrete-time Markov processes, each of which had two possible states: 1…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Keqin Liu , Richard Weber , Chengzhong Zhang

Restless bandits are an important class of problems with applications in recommender systems, active learning, revenue management and other areas. We consider infinite-horizon discounted restless bandits with many arms where a fixed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-31 Xiangyu Zhang , Peter I. Frazier

Whittle index is a generalization of Gittins index that provides very efficient allocation rules for restless multi-armed bandits. In this work, we develop an algorithm to test the indexability and compute the Whittle indices of any…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2023-06-23 Nicolas Gast , Bruno Gaujal , Kimang Khun

Multi-action restless multi-armed bandits (RMABs) are a powerful framework for constrained resource allocation in which $N$ independent processes are managed. However, previous work only study the offline setting where problem dynamics are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-24 Jackson A. Killian , Arpita Biswas , Sanket Shah , Milind Tambe

This paper studies restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problems with unknown arm transition dynamics but with known correlated arm features. The goal is to learn a model to predict transition dynamics given features, where the Whittle index…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-15 Kai Wang , Shresth Verma , Aditya Mate , Sanket Shah , Aparna Taneja , Neha Madhiwalla , Aparna Hegde , Milind Tambe

The restless multi-armed bandit problem is a paradigmatic modeling framework for optimal dynamic priority allocation in stochastic models of wide-ranging applications that has been widely investigated and applied since its inception in a…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2026-01-26 José Niño-Mora

The restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) framework is a popular approach to solving resource allocation problems in networked systems. In this paper, we study optimal resource allocation in RMABs facing unknown and non-stationary dynamics.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Md Kamran Chowdhury Shisher , Vishrant Tripathi , Mung Chiang , Christopher G. Brinton

We extend the provably convergent Full Gradient DQN algorithm for discounted reward Markov decision processes from Avrachenkov et al. (2021) to average reward problems. We experimentally compare widely used RVI Q-Learning with recently…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-04-10 Tejas Pagare , Vivek Borkar , Konstantin Avrachenkov

We introduce Coarse Q-learning (CQL), a reinforcement-learning model for bandit problems with stochastically varying menus. Alternatives are exogenously partitioned into similarity classes, and feedback from sampled alternatives is pooled…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-13 Philippe Jehiel , Aviman Satpathy

The multi-armed restless bandit framework allows to model a wide variety of decision-making problems in areas as diverse as industrial engineering, computer communication, operations research, financial engineering, communication networks…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-27 Urtzi Ayesta , Manu K. Gupta , Ina Maria Verloop

We present a PAC-Bayesian analysis of lifelong learning. In the lifelong learning problem, a sequence of learning tasks is observed one-at-a-time, and the goal is to transfer information acquired from previous tasks to new learning tasks.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-17 Hamish Flynn , David Reeb , Melih Kandemir , Jan Peters

This paper investigates the Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (RMAB) framework under individual penalty constraints to address resource allocation challenges in dynamic wireless networked environments. Unlike conventional RMAB models, our model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Nida Zamir , I-Hong Hou

Multi-armed bandits are one of the theoretical pillars of reinforcement learning. Recently, the investigation of quantum algorithms for multi-armed bandit problems was started, and it was found that a quadratic speed-up (in query…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-26 Simon Buchholz , Jonas M. Kübler , Bernhard Schölkopf

We study the asymptotic optimal control of multi-class restless bandits. A restless bandit is a controllable stochastic process whose state evolution depends on whether or not the bandit is made active. Since finding the optimal control is…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-09-05 I. M. Verloop

We consider a restless multi-armed bandit in which each arm can be in one of two states. When an arm is sampled, the state of the arm is not available to the sampler. Instead, a binary signal with a known randomness that depends on the…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-12-20 Rahul Meshram , D. Manjunath , Aditya Gopalan

In many public health settings, it is important for patients to adhere to health programs, such as taking medications and periodic health checks. Unfortunately, beneficiaries may gradually disengage from such programs, which is detrimental…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-26 Arpita Biswas , Gaurav Aggarwal , Pradeep Varakantham , Milind Tambe

Modifying the reward-biased maximum likelihood method originally proposed in the adaptive control literature, we propose novel learning algorithms to handle the explore-exploit trade-off in linear bandits problems as well as generalized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-09 Yu-Heng Hung , Ping-Chun Hsieh , Xi Liu , P. R. Kumar

Restless multi-armed bandits (RMAB) extend multi-armed bandits so pulling an arm impacts future states. Despite the success of RMABs, a key limiting assumption is the separability of rewards into a sum across arms. We address this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Naveen Raman , Zheyuan Ryan Shi , Fei Fang

We study a finite-horizon restless multi-armed bandit problem with multiple actions, dubbed R(MA)^2B. The state of each arm evolves according to a controlled Markov decision process (MDP), and the reward of pulling an arm depends on both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Guojun Xiong , Jian Li , Rahul Singh