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Related papers: Policy Gradient in Robust MDPs with Global Converg…

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We address the problem of finding the optimal policy of a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) using a gradient descent-based algorithm. Previous results have shown that a primal-dual approach can achieve an $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-07 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

We study robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, which capture interdependencies across states unlike traditional rectangular models. While non-rectangular robust policy evaluation is generally…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Navdeep Kumar , Adarsh Gupta , Maxence Mohamed Elfatihi , Giorgia Ramponi , Kfir Yehuda Levy , Shie Mannor

Many real-world decision-making problems face the off-dynamics challenge: the agent learns a policy in a source domain and deploys it in a target domain with different state transitions. The distributionally robust Markov decision process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Marnix Suilen , Thom Badings , Eline M. Bovy , David Parker , Nils Jansen

This paper presents a robust reinforcement learning algorithm called robust deterministic policy gradient (RDPG), which reformulates the H-infinity control problem as a two-player zero-sum dynamic game between a user and an adversary. The…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Taeho Lee , Donghwan Lee

Safety and robustness are two desired properties for any reinforcement learning algorithm. CMDPs can handle additional safety constraints and RMDPs can perform well under model uncertainties. In this paper, we propose to unite these two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-21 Reazul Hasan Russel , Mouhacine Benosman , Jeroen Van Baar , Radu Corcodel

This paper addresses the problem of model-free reinforcement learning for Robust Markov Decision Process (RMDP) with large state spaces. The goal of the RMDP framework is to find a policy that is robust against the parameter uncertainties…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-15 Kishan Panaganti , Dileep Kalathil

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a general framework to model decision problems where the system dynamics are changing or only partially known. Efficient methods for some \texttt{sa}-rectangular robust MDPs exist, using its…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Navdeep Kumar , Kfir Levy , Kaixin Wang , Shie Mannor

We consider the problem of solving robust Markov decision process (MDP), which involves a set of discounted, finite state, finite action space MDPs with uncertain transition kernels. The goal of planning is to find a robust policy that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Yan Li , Guanghui Lan , Tuo Zhao

We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Navdeep Kumar , Yashaswini Murthy , Itai Shufaro , Kfir Y. Levy , R. Srikant , Shie Mannor

Markov Decision Processes are classically solved using Value Iteration and Policy Iteration algorithms. Recent interest in Reinforcement Learning has motivated the study of methods inspired by optimization, such as gradient ascent. Among…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-05 Sajad Khodadadian , Prakirt Raj Jhunjhunwala , Sushil Mahavir Varma , Siva Theja Maguluri

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) on Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous action spaces is often approached by directly training parametric policies along the direction of estimated policy gradients (PGs). Previous research…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-05 Gang Chen

One key challenge for multi-task Reinforcement learning (RL) in practice is the absence of task indicators. Robust RL has been applied to deal with task ambiguity, but may result in over-conservative policies. To balance the worst-case…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Mengdi Xu , Peide Huang , Yaru Niu , Visak Kumar , Jielin Qiu , Chao Fang , Kuan-Hui Lee , Xuewei Qi , Henry Lam , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

In high-stake scenarios like medical treatment and auto-piloting, it's risky or even infeasible to collect online experimental data to train the agent. Simulation-based training can alleviate this issue, but may suffer from its inherent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Jialian Li , Tongzheng Ren , Dong Yan , Hang Su , Jun Zhu

We study policy optimization for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple reward value functions, which are to be jointly optimized according to given criteria such as proportional fairness (smooth concave scalarization), hard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-19 Ruida Zhou , Tao Liu , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

We study the common generalization of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with sets of transition probabilities, known as robust MDPs (RMDPs). A standard goal in RMDPs is to compute a policy that maximizes the expected return under an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-20 Alessandro Abate , Thom Badings , Giuseppe De Giacomo , Francesco Fabiano

Policy gradient methods are a vital ingredient behind the success of modern reinforcement learning. Modern policy gradient methods, although successful, introduce a residual error in gradient estimation. In this work, we argue that this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-05 Pulkit Katdare , Anant Joshi , Katherine Driggs-Campbell

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Tien Mai , Patrick Jaillet

We study the problem of computing an optimal policy of an infinite-horizon discounted constrained Markov decision process (constrained MDP). Despite the popularity of Lagrangian-based policy search methods used in practice, the oscillation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-18 Dongsheng Ding , Chen-Yu Wei , Kaiqing Zhang , Alejandro Ribeiro