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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…

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

In this paper, we investigate the concentration properties of cumulative reward in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), focusing on both asymptotic and non-asymptotic settings. We introduce a unified approach to characterize reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Borna Sayedana , Peter E. Caines , Aditya Mahajan

There are situations in which an agent should receive rewards only after having accomplished a series of previous tasks, that is, rewards are non-Markovian. One natural and quite general way to represent history-dependent rewards is via a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-10-01 Gavin Rens , Jean-François Raskin , Raphaël Reynouad , Giuseppe Marra

This note re-visits the rolling-horizon control approach to the problem of a Markov decision process (MDP) with infinite-horizon discounted expected reward criterion. Distinguished from the classical value-iteration approach, we develop an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Hyeong Soo Chang

We consider the batch (off-line) policy learning problem in the infinite horizon Markov Decision Process. Motivated by mobile health applications, we focus on learning a policy that maximizes the long-term average reward. We propose a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Peng Liao , Zhengling Qi , Runzhe Wan , Predrag Klasnja , Susan Murphy

Training reinforcement learning (RL) agents using scalar reward signals is often infeasible when an environment has sparse and non-Markovian rewards. Moreover, handcrafting these reward functions before training is prone to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Alessandro Abate , Yousif Almulla , James Fox , David Hyland , Michael Wooldridge

Model-free reinforcement learning is known to be memory and computation efficient and more amendable to large scale problems. In this paper, two model-free algorithms are introduced for learning infinite-horizon average-reward Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Chen-Yu Wei , Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Haipeng Luo , Hiteshi Sharma , Rahul Jain

We propose a general framework for entropy-regularized average-reward reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs). Our approach is based on extending the linear-programming formulation of policy optimization in MDPs to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-23 Gergely Neu , Anders Jonsson , Vicenç Gómez

In the optimization of dynamical systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers a model-free approach to the problem, where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-02 Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal , Ather Gattami

Fairness has emerged as an important concern in automated decision-making in recent years, especially when these decisions affect human welfare. In this work, we study fairness in temporally extended decision-making settings, specifically…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Ganesh Ghalme , Vineet Nair , Vishakha Patil , Yilun Zhou

We develop several new algorithms for learning Markov Decision Processes in an infinite-horizon average-reward setting with linear function approximation. Using the optimism principle and assuming that the MDP has a linear structure, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-27 Chen-Yu Wei , Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Haipeng Luo , Rahul Jain

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are fundamental to many real-world applications. Although reinforcement learning (RL) has shown success in fully observable domains, learning policies from traces in partially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Yuly Wu , Jiamou Liu , Libo Zhang

Decision-making policies for agents are often synthesized with the constraint that a formal specification of behaviour is satisfied. Here we focus on infinite-horizon properties. On the one hand, Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is a popular…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Jan Křetínský

We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) framework for multi-objective decision-making, where the agent seeks to optimize a vector of rewards rather than a single scalar value. The objective is to ensure that the time-averaged reward vector…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-18 Rahul Misra , Manuela L. Bujorianu , Rafał Wisniewski

Controlled discrete time Markov processes are studied first with long run general discounting functional. It is shown that optimal strategies for average reward per unit time problem are also optimal for average generally discounting…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-27 Łukasz Stettner

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

What are the functionals of the reward that can be computed and optimized exactly in Markov Decision Processes?In the finite-horizon, undiscounted setting, Dynamic Programming (DP) can only handle these operations efficiently for certain…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-20 Alexandre Marthe , Aurélien Garivier , Claire Vernade

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Vincent Leon , S. Rasoul Etesami

This paper studies the risk-averse mean-variance optimization in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs). The involved variance metric concerns reward variability during the whole process, and future deviations are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-01-19 Shuai Ma , Xiaoteng Ma , Li Xia