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We study optimality for the safety-constrained Markov decision process which is the underlying framework for safe reinforcement learning. Specifically, we consider a constrained Markov decision process (with finite states and finite…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-07-13 Rahul Misra , Rafał Wisniewski , Carsten Skovmose Kallesøe

Many real-world problems come with action spaces represented as feature vectors. Although high-dimensional control is a largely unsolved problem, there has recently been progress for modest dimensionalities. Here we report on a successful…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-12-17 Peter Sunehag , Richard Evans , Gabriel Dulac-Arnold , Yori Zwols , Daniel Visentin , Ben Coppin

Models of many real-life applications, such as queuing models of communication networks or computing systems, have a countably infinite state-space. Algorithmic and learning procedures that have been developed to produce optimal policies…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-19 Saghar Adler , Vijay Subramanian

Traditional controllers have limitations as they rely on prior knowledge about the physics of the problem, require modeling of dynamics, and struggle to adapt to abnormal situations. Deep reinforcement learning has the potential to address…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-24 Ammar N. Abbas , Georgios C. Chasparis , John D. Kelleher

Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Rene Carmona , Mathieu Lauriere

We study the problem of learning safe control policies that are also effective; i.e., maximizing the probability of satisfying a linear temporal logic (LTL) specification of a task, and the discounted reward capturing the (classic) control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Alper Kamil Bozkurt , Yu Wang , Miroslav Pajic

The ability to learn and execute optimal control policies safely is critical to realization of complex autonomy, especially where task restarts are not available and/or the systems are safety-critical. Safety requirements are often…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-06 S M Nahid Mahmud , Moad Abudia , Scott A Nivison , Zachary I. Bell , Rushikesh Kamalapurkar

In safe Reinforcement Learning (RL), safety cost is typically defined as a function dependent on the immediate state and actions. In practice, safety constraints can often be non-Markovian due to the insufficient fidelity of state…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Siow Meng Low , Akshat Kumar

Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Mohamad Louai Shehab , Antoine Aspeel , Necmiye Ozay

We consider synthesis of control policies that maximize the probability of satisfying given temporal logic specifications in unknown, stochastic environments. We model the interaction between the system and its environment as a Markov…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2014-05-01 Jie Fu , Ufuk Topcu

We study model-based learning of finite-window policies in tabular partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A common approach to learning under partial observability is to approximate unbounded history dependencies using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Philip Jordan , Maryam Kamgarpour

Several works have addressed the problem of incorporating constraints in the reinforcement learning (RL) framework, however majority of them can only guarantee the satisfaction of soft constraints. In this work, we address the problem of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Kwangyeon Kim , Akshita Gupta , Hong-Cheol Choi , Inseok Hwang

We study the estimation of risk-sensitive policies in reinforcement learning problems defined by a Markov Decision Process (MDPs) whose state and action spaces are countably finite. Prior efforts are predominately afflicted by computational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-02 Junyu Zhang , Amrit Singh Bedi , Mengdi Wang , Alec Koppel

Reinforcement learning studies how an agent should interact with an environment to maximize its cumulative reward. A standard way to study this question abstractly is to ask how many samples an agent needs from the environment to learn an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-12-21 Daochen Wang , Aarthi Sundaram , Robin Kothari , Ashish Kapoor , Martin Roetteler

Traditionally, Reinforcement Learning (RL) aims at deciding how to act optimally for an artificial agent. We argue that deciding when to act is equally important. As humans, we drift from default, instinctive or memorized behaviors to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-17 Alexis Jacq , Johan Ferret , Olivier Pietquin , Matthieu Geist

While reinforcement learning has been increasingly applied to stochastic control, few studies have systematically examined policy-based methods in queuing environments modeled as a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP). To address this gap,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Joseph Walton , Gabriel Nicolosi

This paper develops a quantized Q-learning algorithm for the optimal control of controlled diffusion processes on $\mathbb{R}^d$ under both discounted and ergodic (average) cost criteria. We first establish near-optimality of finite-state…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-16 Erhan Bayraktar , Ali D. Kara , Somnath Pradhan , Serdar Yuksel

In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning-based algorithm for trajectory optimization for constrained dynamical systems. This problem is motivated by the fact that for most robotic systems, the dynamics may not always be known.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-05 Kei Ota , Devesh K. Jha , Tomoaki Oiki , Mamoru Miura , Takashi Nammoto , Daniel Nikovski , Toshisada Mariyama

Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is widely used to specify high-level objectives for system policies, and it is highly desirable for autonomous systems to learn the optimal policy with respect to such specifications. However, learning the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-26 Daqian Shao , Marta Kwiatkowska

We study reinforcement learning for the optimal control of Branching Markov Decision Processes (BMDPs), a natural extension of (multitype) Branching Markov Chains (BMCs). The state of a (discrete-time) BMCs is a collection of entities of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Ernst Moritz Hahn , Mateo Perez , Sven Schewe , Fabio Somenzi , Ashutosh Trivedi , Dominik Wojtczak