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Related papers: Nearly Optimal Latent State Decoding in Block MDPs

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We present a framework to address a class of sequential decision making problems. Our framework features learning the optimal control policy with robustness to noisy data, determining the unknown state and action parameters, and performing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-20 Amber Srivastava , Srinivasa M Salapaka

It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-16 Guido Montufar , Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi , Nihat Ay

We study computational and statistical aspects of learning Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs). In this model, the learner interacts with an MDP drawn at the beginning of each epoch from an unknown mixture of MDPs. To sidestep known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Fan Chen , Constantinos Daskalakis , Noah Golowich , Alexander Rakhlin

Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a standard model for agents making decisions in uncertain environments. Most work on POMDPs focuses on synthesizing strategies based on the available capabilities. However, system…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-07-12 Alyzia-Maria Konsta , Alberto Lluch Lafuente , Christoph Matheja

We study the exploration problem with approximate linear action-value functions in episodic reinforcement learning under the notion of low inherent Bellman error, a condition normally employed to show convergence of approximate value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-30 Andrea Zanette , Alessandro Lazaric , Mykel Kochenderfer , Emma Brunskill

Recent advances have significantly improved our understanding of the sample complexity of learning in average-reward Markov decision processes (AMDPs) under the generative model. However, much less is known about the constrained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Yukuan Wei , Xudong Li , Lin F. Yang

In many practical sequential decision-making problems, tracking the state of the environment incurs a sensing/communication/computation cost. In these settings, the agent's interaction with its environment includes the additional component…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Vansh Kapoor , Jayakrishnan Nair

In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) with peak constraints, where an agent chooses a policy to optimize an objective and at the same time satisfy additional constraints. The agent has to take…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-09 Ather Gattami

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

Reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) considers the setting where the agent does not have access to a reward function during exploration, but must propose a near-optimal policy for an arbitrary reward function revealed only after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Andrew Wagenmaker , Yifang Chen , Max Simchowitz , Simon S. Du , Kevin Jamieson

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…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2016-01-28 Mikko Lauri , Nikolay Atanasov , George J. Pappas , Risto Ritala

The key assumption underlying linear Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) is that the learner has access to a known feature map $\phi(x, a)$ that maps state-action pairs to $d$-dimensional vectors, and that the rewards and transitions are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-20 Noah Golowich , Ankur Moitra , Dhruv Rohatgi

We study upper and lower bounds on the sample-complexity of learning near-optimal behaviour in finite-state discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). For the upper bound we make the assumption that each action leads to at most two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-05-17 Tor Lattimore , Marcus Hutter

Decentralized Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (Dec-POMDPs) are known to be NEXP-Complete and intractable to solve. However, for problems such as cooperative navigation, obstacle avoidance, and formation control, basic…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-06-05 Alex DeWeese , Guannan Qu

In this paper, we consider a modified version of the control problem in a model free Markov decision process (MDP) setting with large state and action spaces. The control problem most commonly addressed in the contemporary literature is to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-02-01 Ajin George Joseph , Shalabh Bhatnagar

We study the problem of zero-delay coding for the transmission of a Markov source over a noisy channel with feedback and present a reinforcement learning solution which is guaranteed to achieve near-optimality. To this end, we formulate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Liam Cregg , Fady Alajaji , Serdar Yuksel

In this paper we consider the problem of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy for a discounted Markov Decision Process (MDP). Given an MDP with $S$ states, $A$ actions, the discount factor $\gamma \in (0,1)$, and an approximation threshold…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Zihan Zhang , Yuan Zhou , Xiangyang Ji

Real-world sequential decision making problems commonly involve partial observability, which requires the agent to maintain a memory of history in order to infer the latent states, plan and make good decisions. Coping with partial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-09 Yonathan Efroni , Chi Jin , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Sobhan Miryoosefi

We study reward-free and reward-agnostic exploration in episodic finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs), where an agent explores an unknown environment without observing external rewards. Reward-free exploration aims to enable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Oran Ridel , Alon Cohen

This work focuses on off-policy evaluation (OPE) with function approximation in infinite-horizon undiscounted Markov decision processes (MDPs). For MDPs that are ergodic and linear (i.e. where rewards and dynamics are linear in some known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-24 Nevena Lazic , Dong Yin , Mehrdad Farajtabar , Nir Levine , Dilan Gorur , Chris Harris , Dale Schuurmans