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We study a novel variant of online finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes with adversarially changing loss functions and initially unknown dynamics. In each episode, the learner suffers the loss accumulated along the trajectory realized…
We propose a new method for optimistic planning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes based on the idea of adding regularization to the updates of an otherwise standard approximate value iteration procedure. This…
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…
This paper presents two new approaches to decomposing and solving large Markov decision problems (MDPs), a partial decoupling method and a complete decoupling method. In these approaches, a large, stochastic decision problem is divided into…
We consider a policy gradient algorithm applied to a finite-arm bandit problem with Bernoulli rewards. We allow learning rates to depend on the current state of the algorithm, rather than use a deterministic time-decreasing learning rate.…
Calculating optimal policies is known to be computationally difficult for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces. This paper studies finite-state approximations of discrete time Markov decision processes with…
Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…
Policy optimization methods with function approximation are widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, it remains elusive how to design such algorithms with statistical guarantees. Leveraging a multi-agent performance…
We consider the scheduling problem concerning N projects. Each project evolves as a multi-state Markov process. At each time instant, one project is scheduled to work, and some reward depending on the state of the chosen project is…
We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on several approximate variations of the Policy Iteration algorithm: Approximate Policy Iteration, Conservative Policy…
In this paper we discuss policy iteration methods for approximate solution of a finite-state discounted Markov decision problem, with a focus on feature-based aggregation methods and their connection with deep reinforcement learning…
We study the sequential decision making problem of maximizing the expected total reward while satisfying a constraint on the expected total utility. We employ the natural policy gradient method to solve the discounted infinite-horizon…
This paper addresses an important class of restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problems that finds broad application in operations research, stochastic optimization, and reinforcement learning. There are $N$ independent Markov processes that…
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is central to aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) in reasoning tasks with verifiable rewards. However, standard token-level PPO struggles in this setting due to the instability of temporal credit…
This paper studies the approximation of optimal control policies by quantized (discretized) policies for a very general class of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The problem is motivated by applications in networked control systems,…
Recent theoretical work studies sample-efficient reinforcement learning (RL) extensively in two settings: learning interactively in the environment (online RL), or learning from an offline dataset (offline RL). However, existing algorithms…
We investigate the problem of synthesizing optimal control policies for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with both qualitative and quantitative objectives. Specifically, our goal is to achieve a given linear temporal logic (LTL) task with…
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 the restless Markov bandit problem, in which the state of each arm evolves according to a Markov process independently of the learner's actions. We suggest an algorithm that after $T$ steps achieves $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret…
Robust optimal or min-max model predictive control (MPC) approaches aim to guarantee constraint satisfaction over a known, bounded uncertainty set while minimizing a worst-case performance bound. Traditionally, these methods compute a…