Related papers: The variance-penalized stochastic shortest path pr…
We study the adversarial Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem with sparse costs under full-information feedback. In the known transition setting, existing bounds based on Online Mirror Descent (OMD) with negative-entropy regularization…
Partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with discounted-sum payoff are a standard framework to model a wide range of problems related to decision making under uncertainty. Traditionally, the goal has been to obtain policies…
We study episodic reinforcement learning in non-stationary linear (a.k.a. low-rank) Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), i.e, both the reward and transition kernel are linear with respect to a given feature map and are allowed to evolve either…
This article presents a constrained policy optimization approach for the optimal control of systems under nonstationary uncertainties. We introduce an assumption that we call Markov embeddability that allows us to cast the stochastic…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) in which the transition probabilities and rewards belong to an uncertainty set parametrized by a collection of random variables. The probability distributions for these random parameters are…
Given a metric $(V,d)$ and a $\textsf{root} \in V$, the classic $\textsf{$k$-TSP}$ problem is to find a tour originating at the $\textsf{root}$ of minimum length that visits at least $k$ nodes in $V$. In this work, motivated by applications…
Consider the problem of minimizing the expected value of a (possibly nonconvex) cost function parameterized by a random (vector) variable, when the expectation cannot be computed accurately (e.g., because the statistics of the random…
Single Source Shortest Paths ($\textrm{SSSP}$) is among the most well-studied problems in computer science. In the incremental (resp. decremental) setting, the goal is to maintain distances from a fixed source in a graph undergoing edge…
We consider the problem of finding the best memoryless stochastic policy for an infinite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) with finite state and action spaces with respect to either the discounted or mean reward…
We consider a constrained Markov Decision Problem (CMDP) where the goal of an agent is to maximize the expected discounted sum of rewards over an infinite horizon while ensuring that the expected discounted sum of costs exceeds a certain…
In this paper we address the class of Sequential Decision Making (SDM) problems that are characterized by time-varying parameters. These parameter dynamics are either pre-specified or manipulable. At any given time instant the decision…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…
This paper investigates a series of optimization problems for one-counter Markov decision processes (MDPs) and integer-weighted MDPs with finite state space. Specifically, it considers problems addressing termination probabilities and…
We tackle the problem of acting in an unknown finite and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) for which the expected shortest path from any state to any other state is bounded by a finite number $D$. An MDP consists of $S$ states and $A$…
We study the problem of synthesizing a controller that maximizes the entropy of a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) subject to a constraint on the expected total reward. Such a controller minimizes the predictability of a…
We study the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. We first derive sample complexity bounds when the learner has access to a generative model. We show that there exists a…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…
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 non-standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the target function is not only a simple expectation of the accumulated reward. Instead, we consider rather general functionals of the joint distribution of terminal state and…
We propose a numerical method to approximate the value function for the optimal stopping problem of a piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP). Our approach is based on quantization of the post jump location---inter-arrival time Markov…