Related papers: Stochastic Processes with Expected Stopping Time

We study finite state random dynamical systems (RDS) and their induced Markov chains (MC) as stochastic models for complex dynamics. The linear representation of deterministic maps in RDS are matrix-valued random variables whose…

Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) remains a central challenge in sequential decision-making, especially when dealing with large state spaces and long-term optimization criteria. A key step in Bellman dynamic programming algorithms is…

We propose a method for approximating solutions to optimization problems involving the global stability properties of parameter-dependent continuous-time autonomous dynamical systems. The method relies on an approximation of the…

Learning a Markov Decision Process (MDP) from a fixed batch of trajectories is a non-trivial task whose outcome's quality depends on both the amount and the diversity of the sampled regions of the state-action space. Yet, many MDPs are…

We study a finite time horizon Markov decision process (MDP) consisting of several groups of multi-action finite-state restless bandit processes, which are identical within each group. The bandit processes into different groups can be…

In this paper, we consider solving discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under the constraint that the resulting policy is stabilizing. In practice MDPs are solved based on some form of policy approximation. We will leverage recent…

We investigate the problem of synthesizing optimal control policies for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with both qualitative and quantitative objectives. Specifically, our goal is to achieve a given linear temporal logic (LTL) task with…

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple limit-average (or mean-payoff) objectives. There exist two different views: (i) the expectation semantics, where the goal is to optimize the expected mean-payoff objective, and (ii)…

We propose two scheduling algorithms that seek to optimize the quality of scalably coded videos that have been stored at a video server before transmission.} The first scheduling algorithm is derived from a Markov Decision Process (MDP)…

In Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), the reward obtained in a state depends on the properties of the last state and action. This state dependency makes it difficult to reward more interesting long-term behaviors, such as always closing a…

The linear response of a dynamical system refers to changes to properties of the system when small external perturbations are applied. We consider the little-studied question of selecting an optimal perturbation so as to (i) maximise the…

Motivated by robotic surveillance applications, this paper studies the novel problem of maximizing the return time entropy of a Markov chain, subject to a graph topology with travel times and stationary distribution. The return time entropy…

We consider the reinforcement learning problem for the constrained Markov decision process (CMDP), which plays a central role in satisfying safety or resource constraints in sequential learning and decision-making. In this problem, we are…

Following the occurrence of an extreme natural or man-made event, community recovery management should aim at providing optimal restoration policies for a community over a planning horizon. Calculating such optimal restoration polices in…

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…

Typical Recommender systems adopt a static view of the recommendation process and treat it as a prediction problem. We argue that it is more appropriate to view the problem of generating recommendations as a sequential decision problem and,…

We consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the rewards are unknown and may change in an adversarial manner. We provide an algorithm that achieves state-of-the-art regret bound of $O( \sqrt{\tau (\ln|S|+\ln|A|)T}\ln(T))$, where $S$…

Discrete time control systems whose dynamics and observations are described by stochastic equations are common in engineering, operations research, health care, and economics. For example, stochastic filtering problems are usually defined…

This paper is devoted to solving a time-inconsistent risk-sensitive control problem with parameter $\e$ and its limit case ($\e\rightarrow0^+$) for countable-stated Markov decision processes (MDPs for short). Since the cost functional is…

We consider synchronizing properties of Markov decision processes (MDP), viewed as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in some…