Related papers: Exponential Lower Bounds for Planning in MDPs With…

We study infinite horizon discounted Mean Field Control (MFC) problems with common noise through the lens of Mean Field Markov Decision Processes (MFMDP). We allow the agents to use actions that are randomized not only at the individual…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…

Constrained partially observable Markov decision processes (CPOMDPs) have been used to model various real-world phenomena. However, they are notoriously difficult to solve to optimality, and there exist only a few approximation methods for…

We study policy optimization in an infinite horizon, $\gamma$-discounted constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). Our objective is to return a policy that achieves large expected reward with a small constraint violation. We consider the…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

We adopt an optimal-control framework for addressing the undiscounted infinite-horizon discrete-time restless $N$-armed bandit problem. Unlike most studies that rely on constructing policies based on the relaxed single-armed Markov Decision…

We consider the problem of finding good finite-horizon policies for POMDPs under the expected reward metric. The policies considered are {em free finite-memory policies with limited memory}; a policy is a mapping from the space of…

This paper proves continuity of value functions in discounted periodic-review single-commodity total-cost inventory control problems with \revision{continuous inventory levels,} fixed ordering costs, possibly bounded inventory storage…

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are systems in which one agent interacts with a stochastic environment, and receives only partial information about the current state. In a multi-environment POMDP (MEPOMDP), the…

This paper investigates the limit behavior of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) made of independent particles evolving in a common environment, when the number of particles goes to infinity. In the finite horizon case or with a discounted…

We propose a new policy gradient method, named homotopic policy mirror descent (HPMD), for solving discounted, infinite horizon MDPs with finite state and action spaces. HPMD performs a mirror descent type policy update with an additional…

We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…

Missions for autonomous systems often require agents to visit multiple targets in complex operating conditions. This work considers the problem of visiting a set of targets in minimum time by a team of non-communicating agents in a Markov…

The specification of aMarkov decision process (MDP) can be difficult. Reward function specification is especially problematic; in practice, it is often cognitively complex and time-consuming for users to precisely specify rewards. This work…

We present a general framework for applying machine-learning algorithms to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the…

We study model-based learning of finite-window policies in tabular partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A common approach to learning under partial observability is to approximate unbounded history dependencies using…

Recent studies have shown that episodic reinforcement learning (RL) is not more difficult than contextual bandits, even with a long planning horizon and unknown state transitions. However, these results are limited to either tabular Markov…

Logic-Based Benders Decomposition (LBBD) and its Branch-and-Cut variant, namely Branch-and-Check, enjoy an extensive applicability on a broad variety of problems, including scheduling. Although LBBD offers problem-specific cuts to impose…

We study offline reinforcement learning (RL) with linear MDPs under the infinite-horizon discounted setting which aims to learn a policy that maximizes the expected discounted cumulative reward using a pre-collected dataset. Existing…

In this technical note, we establish an upper-bound on the threshold on the discount factor starting from which all discounted-optimal deterministic policies are gain-optimal, that we prove to be tight on an example. To address…