Related papers: Monte Carlo Information-Oriented Planning

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…

The agent learns to organize decision behavior to achieve a behavioral goal, such as reward maximization, and reinforcement learning is often used for this optimization. Learning an optimal behavioral strategy is difficult under the…

Decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs) are rich models for cooperative decision-making under uncertainty, but are often intractable to solve optimally (NEXP-complete). The transition and observation…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) form a prominent model for uncertainty in sequential decision making. We are interested in constructing algorithms with theoretical guarantees to determine whether the agent has a…

Many medical decision-making tasks can be framed as partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs). However, prevailing two-stage approaches that first learn a POMDP and then solve it often fail because the model that best fits the…

We present a new Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm to solve the stochastic orienteering problem with chance constraints, i.e., a version of the problem where travel costs are random, and one is assigned a bound on the tolerable…

In the real world, planning is often challenged by distribution shifts. As such, a model of the environment obtained under one set of conditions may no longer remain valid as the distribution of states or the environment dynamics change,…

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…

The maximum reachability probabilities in a Markov decision process can be computed using value iteration (VI). Recently, simulation-based heuristic extensions of VI have been introduced, such as bounded real-time dynamic programming…

Multi-step reasoning improves the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) but increases the risk of errors propagating through intermediate steps. Process reward models (PRMs) mitigate this by scoring each step individually, enabling…

We analyze a tree search problem with an underlying Markov decision process, in which the goal is to identify the best action at the root that achieves the highest cumulative reward. We present a new tree policy that optimally allocates a…

Online game playing algorithms produce high-quality strategies with a fraction of memory and computation required by their offline alternatives. Continual Resolving (CR) is a recent theoretically sound approach to online game playing that…

State-of-the-art Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) solvers combine systematic tree search with a plethora of hard-coded heuristics, such as the branching rule. The idea of learning branching rules from data has received increasing…

We consider real-time remote tracking of a Markov source observed by multiple heterogeneous sensors with state-dependent sensing accuracy, motivated by distributed camera networks with overlapping coverage and spatial blind spots. Upon…

Active classification, i.e., the sequential decision-making process aimed at data acquisition for classification purposes, arises naturally in many applications, including medical diagnosis, intrusion detection, and object tracking. In this…

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are stochastic optimization problems that model situations where a decision maker controls a system based on its state. Partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are generalizations of MDPs where…

In recent years, reinforcement learning has achieved many remarkable successes due to the growing adoption of deep learning techniques and the rapid growth in computing power. Nevertheless, it is well-known that flat reinforcement learning…

We consider the problem of designing policies for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with dynamic coherent risk objectives. Synthesizing risk-averse optimal policies for POMDPs requires infinite memory and thus…

In many problem settings, most notably in game playing, an agent receives a possibly delayed reward for its actions. Often, those rewards are handcrafted and not naturally given. Even simple terminal-only rewards, like winning equals one…

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has emerged as an effective paradigm for improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models. However, RLVR training is often hindered by sparse binary rewards and weak credit…