Related papers: Controlling a Markov Decision Process with an Abru…
We consider a Markov decision process with deterministic state transition dynamics, adversarially generated rewards that change arbitrarily from round to round, and a bandit feedback model in which the decision maker only observes the…
In this paper, we consider solving discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under the constraint that the resulting policy is stabilizing. In practice MDPs are solved based on some form of policy approximation. We will leverage recent…
We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…
We study the detection problem for a finite set of Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the MDPs have the same state and action spaces but possibly different probabilistic transition functions. Any one of these MDPs could be the model for…
Content caching in wireless networks provides a substantial opportunity to trade off low cost memory storage with energy consumption, yet finding the optimal causal policy with low computational complexity remains a challenge. This paper…
We consider the constrained optimal control problem for the gradual-impulsive CTMDP model with the performance criteria being the expected total undiscounted costs (from the running cost and the cost from each time an impulse being…
In this paper, we study a continuous-time discounted jump Markov decision process with both controlled actions and observations. The observation is only available for a discrete set of time instances. At each time of observation, one has to…
We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…
A constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) approach is developed for response-adaptive procedures in clinical trials with binary outcomes. The resulting CMDP class of Bayesian response -- adaptive procedures can be used to target a…
We study policy optimization problems for deterministic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with metric state and action spaces, which we refer to as Metric Policy Optimization Problems (MPOPs). Our goal is to establish theoretical results on…
The curse of dimensionality is a widely known issue in reinforcement learning (RL). In the tabular setting where the state space $\mathcal{S}$ and the action space $\mathcal{A}$ are both finite, to obtain a nearly optimal policy with…
We study the control of finite-state systems driven by exogenous disturbances, and design causal policies that track the performance of a lookahead benchmark controller. This objective is formalized through dynamic regret, so that favorable…
The choice of transition kernel critically influences the performance of the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Despite the importance of kernel choice, guiding principles for optimal kernels have not been established. Here, we propose a…
Consumption Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are probabilistic decision-making models of resource-constrained systems. In a CMDP, the controller possesses a certain amount of a critical resource, such as electric power. Each action of the…
We consider sensor scheduling as the optimal observability problem for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This model fits to the cases where a Markov process is observed by a single sensor which needs to be dynamically…
This work studies online episodic tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs) with known transitions and develops best-of-both-worlds algorithms that achieve refined data-dependent regret bounds in the adversarial regime and variance-dependent…
We investigate the problem of optimal control synthesis for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), addressing both qualitative and quantitative objectives. Specifically, we require the system to satisfy a qualitative task specified by a Linear…
We consider multiple parallel Markov decision processes (MDPs) coupled by global constraints, where the time varying objective and constraint functions can only be observed after the decision is made. Special attention is given to how well…
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…
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…