Related papers: A Note on Optimization Formulations of Markov Deci…
It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…
We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…
Many applications -- including power systems, robotics, and economics -- involve a dynamical system interacting with a stochastic and hard-to-model environment. We adopt a reinforcement learning approach to control such systems.…
In this short note we derive a relationship between the Bregman divergence from the current policy to the optimal policy and the suboptimality of the current value function in a regularized Markov decision process. This result has…
In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) with peak constraints, where an agent chooses a policy to optimize an objective and at the same time satisfy additional constraints. The agent has to take…
We study the problem of learning policy of an infinite-horizon, discounted cost, Markov decision process (MDP) with a large number of states. We compute the actions of a policy that is nearly as good as a policy chosen by a suitable oracle…
Discrete time stochastic optimal control problems and Markov decision processes (MDPs), respectively, serve as fundamental models for problems that involve sequential decision making under uncertainty and as such constitute the theoretical…
In this paper, we study the learning of safe policies in the setting of reinforcement learning problems. This is, we aim to control a Markov Decision Process (MDP) of which we do not know the transition probabilities, but we have access to…
We study the McKean-Vlasov optimal control problem with common noise in various formulations, namely the strong and weak formulation, as well as the Markovian and non-Markovian formulations, and allowing for the law of the control process…
This note further addresses the global optimization problem for max-plus linear systems considered in [Automatica 119 (2020) 109104]. Firstly, the operations between infinity elemens and real numbers involved in the formulas of solving…
We introduce a class of models for multidimensional control problems which we call skip-free Markov decision processes on trees. We describe and analyse an algorithm applicable to Markov decision processes of this type that are skip-free in…
We use differential equations based approaches to provide some {\it \textbf{physics}} insights into analyzing the dynamics of popular optimization algorithms in machine learning. In particular, we study gradient descent, proximal gradient…
Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) extend standard Markov decision processes (MDPs) to account for uncertainty in the transition probabilities. RMDPs have an uncertainty set that defines a set of possible transition functions, each of…
Markov models are often used to capture the temporal patterns of sequential data for statistical learning applications. While the Hidden Markov modeling-based learning mechanisms are well studied in literature, we analyze a…
We study the minimization of a spectral risk measure of the total discounted cost generated by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) over a finite or infinite planning horizon. The MDP is assumed to have Borel state and action spaces and the cost…
We propose and study a novel stochastic inertial primal-dual approach to solve composite optimization problems. These latter problems arise naturally when learning with penalized regularization schemes. Our analysis provide convergence…
Markov decision processes are a ubiquitous formalism for modelling systems with non-deterministic and probabilistic behavior. Verification of these models is subject to the famous state space explosion problem. We alleviate this problem by…
In this paper, we focus on formal synthesis of control policies for finite Markov decision processes with non-negative real-valued costs. We develop an algorithm to automatically generate a policy that guarantees the satisfaction of a…
This work proposes an accelerated primal-dual dynamical system for affine constrained convex optimization and presents a class of primal-dual methods with nonergodic convergence rates. In continuous level, exponential decay of a novel…
In this paper we present a review of the connections between classical algorithms for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and classical gradient-based algorithms in convex optimization. Some of these connections date as far back as the…