English
Related papers

Related papers: The Geometry of Robust Value Functions

200 papers

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Maximilian Nägele , Jan Olle , Thomas Fösel , Remmy Zen , Florian Marquardt

In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic and asymptotic performances of the optimal robust policy and value function of robust Markov Decision Processes(MDPs), where the optimal robust policy and value function are solved only from a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-16 Wenhao Yang , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Mohsen Amiri , Sindri Magnússon

Robustness is important for sequential decision making in a stochastic dynamic environment with uncertain probabilistic parameters. We address the problem of using robust MDPs (RMDPs) to compute policies with provable worst-case guarantees…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-16 Reazul Hasan Russel , Marek Petrik

We propose a new perspective on representation learning in reinforcement learning based on geometric properties of the space of value functions. We leverage this perspective to provide formal evidence regarding the usefulness of value…

The Robust Regularized Markov Decision Process (RRMDP) is proposed to learn policies robust to dynamics shifts by adding regularization to the transition dynamics in the value function. Existing methods mostly use unstructured…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Cheng Tang , Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

Algorithms developed under stationary Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) often face challenges in non-stationary environments, and infinite-horizon formulations may not directly apply to finite-horizon tasks. To address these limitations, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zhizuo Chen , Theodore T. Allen

Reinforcement Learning (RL) encompasses diverse paradigms, including model-based RL, policy-based RL, and value-based RL, each tailored to approximate the model, optimal policy, and optimal value function, respectively. This work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-10 Guhao Feng , Han Zhong

We consider a robust approach to address uncertainty in model parameters in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), which are widely used to model dynamic optimization in many applications. Most prior works consider the case where the uncertainty…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-02 Vineet Goyal , Julien Grand-Clément

An approximate formulation of a robust geometric program (RGP) as a convex program is proposed. Interest in using geometric programs (GPs) to model complex engineering systems has been growing, and this has motivated explicitly modeling the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-08-23 Ali Saab , Edward Burnell , Warren W. Hoburg

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

We build on a recently introduced geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to analyze classical MDP-solving algorithms: Value Iteration (VI) and Policy Iteration (PI). First, we develop a geometry-based analytical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-07 Arsenii Mustafin , Aleksei Pakharev , Alex Olshevsky , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis

Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are receiving much attention in learning a robust policy which is less sensitive to environment changes. There are an increasing number of works analyzing sample-efficiency of robust MDPs. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Wenhao Yang , Han Wang , Tadashi Kozuno , Scott M. Jordan , Zhihua Zhang

With the decreasing cost of data collection, the space of variables or features that can be used to characterize a particular predictor of interest continues to grow exponentially. Therefore, identifying the most characterizing features…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-26 Sali Rasoul , Sodiq Adewole , Alphonse Akakpo

Applying robust optimization often requires selecting an appropriate uncertainty set both in shape and size, a choice that directly affects the trade-off between average-case and worst-case performances. In practice, this calibration is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-28 Hao Hao , Peter Zhang

We present a novel method for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), incorporating the convex property of the value function over the belief space in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). We introduce hard- and soft-enforced…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-13 Daniel Koutas , Daniel Hettegger , Kostas G. Papakonstantinou , Daniel Straub

Learning-based approaches to verifying unknown Markov decision processes (MDPs) often employ uncertain MDPs. These models use, for example, confidence intervals to capture transition uncertainty and allow synthesis of policies that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Yannik Schnitzer , Alessandro Abate , David Parker

General-purpose, intelligent, learning agents cycle through sequences of observations, actions, and rewards that are complex, uncertain, unknown, and non-Markovian. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2009-12-30 Marcus Hutter

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns

The construction presented in this paper can be briefly described as follows: starting from any "finite-dimensional" Markov transition function p_t, on a measurable state space (E,B), we construct a strong Markov process on a certain…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-03-13 Robert J. Vanderbei