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In online learning problems, exploiting low variance plays an important role in obtaining tight performance guarantees yet is challenging because variances are often not known a priori. Recently, considerable progress has been made by Zhang…
Recent advances in constrained reinforcement learning (RL) have endowed reinforcement learning with certain safety guarantees. However, deploying existing constrained RL algorithms in continuous control tasks with general hard constraints…
We consider infinite-horizon $\gamma$-discounted Markov Decision Processes, for which it is known that there exists a stationary optimal policy. We consider the algorithm Value Iteration and the sequence of policies $\pi_1,...,\pi_k$ it…
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,…
This paper tackles the growing issue of excessive data transmission in networks. With increasing traffic, backhaul links and core networks are under significant traffic, leading to the investigation of caching solutions at edge routers.…
This paper proposes and analyzes two new policy learning methods: regularized policy gradient (RPG) and iterative policy optimization (IPO), for a class of discounted linear-quadratic control (LQC) problems over an infinite time horizon…
The restless bandit problem is one of the most well-studied generalizations of the celebrated stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory. In its ultimate generality, the restless bandit problem is known to be PSPACE-Hard to…
This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized…
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…
Policy Optimization (PO) methods are among the most popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms in practice. Recently, Sherman et al. [2023a] proposed a PO-based algorithm with rate-optimal regret guarantees under the linear Markov…
Finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with high-dimensional exogenous uncertainty and endogenous states arise in operations and finance, including the valuation and exercise of Bermudan and real options, but face a scalability…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…
This paper studies a 2-class, 2-server parallel server system under the recently introduced extended heavy traffic condition, which states that the underlying 'static allocation' linear program (LP) is critical, but does not require that it…
This paper studies the remote estimation of multiple Markov sources over a lossy and rate-constrained channel. Unlike most existing studies that treat all source states equally, we exploit the \emph{semantics of information} and consider…
We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on Policy Search algorithms, that compute an approximately optimal policy by following the standard Policy Iteration (PI)…
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…
Markov control algorithms that perform smooth, non-greedy updates of the policy have been shown to be very general and versatile, with policy gradient and Expectation Maximisation algorithms being particularly popular. For these algorithms,…
The problem of solving Markov decision processes under function approximation remains a fundamental challenge, even under linear function approximation settings. A key difficulty arises from a geometric mismatch: while the Bellman…
Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…