Related papers: Tropical Dynamic Programming for Lipschitz Multist…

We show that the max entropy algorithm can be derandomized (with respect to a particular objective function) to give a deterministic $3/2-\epsilon$ approximation algorithm for metric TSP for some $\epsilon > 10^{-36}$. To obtain our result,…

Approximate dynamic programming (ADP) faces challenges in dealing with constraints in control problems. Model predictive control (MPC) is, in comparison, well-known for its accommodation of constraints and stability guarantees, although its…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) with rewards are a widespread and well-studied model for systems that make both probabilistic and nondeterministic choices. A fundamental result about MDPs is that their minimal and maximal expected rewards…

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…

Despite the numerous uses of semidefinite programming (SDP) and its universal solvability via interior point methods (IPMs), it is rarely applied to practical large-scale problems. This mainly owes to the computational cost of IPMs that…

We consider stochastic dynamic programming problems with high-dimensional, discrete state-spaces and finite, discrete-time horizons that prohibit direct computation of the value function from a given Bellman equation for all states and time…

We propose universal randomized function approximation-based empirical value iteration (EVI) algorithms for Markov decision processes. The `empirical' nature comes from each iteration being done empirically from samples available from…

Leveraging the concept of the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD), perimeter control can alleviate network-level congestion by identifying critical intersections and regulating them effectively. Considering the time-varying nature of…

This work addresses an extended class of optimal control problems where a target for a system state has the form of an ellipsoid rather than a fixed, single point. As a computationally affordable method for resolving the extended problem,…

We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a risk measure of variability in cost, under the risk-aware MDPs paradigm. Previous studies showed that risk-aware MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handling risk, can be…

This paper addresses the problem of planning under uncertainty in large Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Factored MDPs represent a complex state space using state variables and the transition model using a dynamic Bayesian network. This…

There has been widespread interest in the use of grid-level storage to handle the variability from increasing penetrations of wind and solar energy. This problem setting requires optimizing energy storage and release decisions for anywhere…

This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear mixture MDPs under the Bellman optimality condition. While guaranteeing computational…

This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear mixture Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the Bellman optimality condition. Our algorithm for linear mixture MDPs achieves a…

This paper studies the optimal control problem for discrete-time nonlinear systems and an approximate dynamic programming-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme is proposed for minimizing a quadratic performance measure. In the…

This paper presents a new formulation for model-free robust optimal regulation of continuous-time nonlinear systems. The proposed reinforcement learning based approach, referred to as incremental adaptive dynamic programming (IADP),…

We propose a human-supervised control synthesis method for a stochastic Dubins vehicle such that the probability of satisfying a specification given as a formula in a fragment of Probabilistic Computational Tree Logic (PCTL) over a set of…

Value functions arise as a component of algorithms as well as performance metrics in statistics and engineering applications. Computation of the associated Bellman equations is numerically challenging in all but a few special cases. A…

The parameters for a Markov Decision Process (MDP) often cannot be specified exactly. Uncertain MDPs (UMDPs) capture this model ambiguity by defining sets which the parameters belong to. Minimax regret has been proposed as an objective for…

In 2012, Pflug and Pichler proved, under regularity assumptions, that the value function in Multistage Stochastic Programming (MSP) is Lipschitz continuous w.r.t. the Nested Distance, which is a distance between scenario trees (or discrete…