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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…
Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…
Model-based learning algorithms have been shown to use experience efficiently when learning to solve Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with finite state and action spaces. However, their high computational cost due to repeatedly solving an…
Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…
This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized…
We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no…
Markov Decision Process (MDP) presents a mathematical framework to formulate the learning processes of agents in reinforcement learning. MDP is limited by the Markovian assumption that a reward only depends on the immediate state and…
Maximising a cumulative reward function that is Markov and stationary, i.e., defined over state-action pairs and independent of time, is sufficient to capture many kinds of goals in a Markov decision process (MDP). However, not all goals…
In reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to perform a task by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback (a numerical reward) for its actions. However, the assumption that rewards are always observable is often not…
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…
Designing control policies whose performance level is guaranteed to remain above a given threshold in a span of environments is a critical feature for the adoption of reinforcement learning (RL) in real-world applications. The search for…
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)…
Entropic regularization of policies in Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a commonly used heuristic to ensure that the learned policy explores the state-space sufficiently before overfitting to a local optimal policy. The primary motivation for…
Humans achieve efficient learning by relying on prior knowledge about the structure of naturally occurring tasks. There is considerable interest in designing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with similar properties. This includes…
The Markov assumption in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) is fundamental in reinforcement learning, influencing both theoretical research and practical applications. Existing methods that rely on the Bellman equation benefit tremendously…
Robustness has been extensively studied in reinforcement learning (RL) to handle various forms of uncertainty such as random perturbations, rare events, and malicious attacks. In this work, we consider one critical type of robustness…
Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) is a natural framework for reinforcement learning tasks with safety constraints, where agents learn a policy that maximizes the long-term reward while satisfying the constraints on the long-term…
Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as optimization of a Markov Decision Process, is a key challenge in artificial intelligence. Two successful approaches to MDP optimization are reinforcement learning and planning, which both…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDP) as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in a single state, or in a given set of…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…