Related papers: Near-Optimal Sample Complexity Bounds for Constrai…
We present the first finite-sample analysis of policy evaluation in robust average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Prior work in this setting have established only asymptotic convergence guarantees, leaving open the question of…
Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) is a recurrent task in engineering. Even though it is known that solutions for minimizing the infinite horizon expected reward can be found in polynomial time using Linear Programming techniques,…
We revisit the problem of finding optimal strategies for deterministic Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs), and a closely related problem of testing feasibility of systems of $m$ linear inequalities on $n$ real variables with at most two…
Safe reinforcement learning has been a promising approach for optimizing the policy of an agent that operates in safety-critical applications. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, SNO-MDP, that explores and optimizes Markov decision…
Stochastic optimization lies at the core of most statistical learning models. The recent great development of stochastic algorithmic tools focused significantly onto proximal gradient iterations, in order to find an efficient approach for…
We study randomized algorithms for constrained optimization, in abstract frameworks that include, in strictly increasing generality: convex programming; LP-type problems; violator spaces; and a setting we introduce, consistent spaces. Such…
Optimal policies in Markov decision processes (MDPs) are very sensitive to model misspecification. This raises serious concerns about deploying them in high-stake domains. Robust MDPs (RMDP) provide a promising framework to mitigate…
This paper discusses algorithms for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs) that have monotone optimal policies. We propose a two-stage alternating convex optimization scheme that can accelerate the search for an optimal policy by…
In this paper, for POMDPs, we provide the convergence of a Q learning algorithm for control policies using a finite history of past observations and control actions, and, consequentially, we establish near optimality of such limit Q…
Standard value function approaches to finding policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are generally considered to be intractable for large models. The intractability of these algorithms is to a large extent a…
While policy optimization algorithms have played an important role in recent empirical success of Reinforcement Learning (RL), the existing theoretical understanding of policy optimization remains rather limited -- they are either…
The paper deals with finite-state Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights assigned to each state-action pair. New algorithms are presented to classify end components according to their limiting behavior with respect to the…
This paper addresses the problem of optimal control of robotic sensing systems aimed at autonomous information gathering in scenarios such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and surveillance and reconnaissance. The information…
We consider the problem of computing minimum and maximum probabilities of satisfying an $\omega$-regular property in a bounded-parameter Markov decision process (BMDP). BMDP arise from Markov decision processes (MDP) by allowing for…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the standard formalism for modelling sequential decision making in stochastic environments. Policy synthesis addresses the problem of how to control or limit the decisions an agent makes so that a given…
We study the computational complexity of central analysis problems for One-Counter Markov Decision Processes (OC-MDPs), a class of finitely-presented, countable-state MDPs. OC-MDPs are equivalent to a controlled extension of (discrete-time)…
Motivated by the recent discovery of a statistical and computational reduction from contextual bandits to offline regression (Simchi-Levi and Xu, 2021), we address the general (stochastic) Contextual Markov Decision Process (CMDP) problem…
We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…
We study the online estimation of the optimal policy of a Markov decision process (MDP). We propose a class of Stochastic Primal-Dual (SPD) methods which exploit the inherent minimax duality of Bellman equations. The SPD methods update a…
This article presents the complexity of reachability decision problems for parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs), an extension to Markov decision processes (MDPs) where transitions probabilities are described by polynomials over a…