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Related papers: Risk-Averse MDPs under Reward Ambiguity

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The online Markov decision process (MDP) is a generalization of the classical Markov decision process that incorporates changing reward functions. In this paper, we propose practical online MDP algorithms with policy iteration and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-16 Yao Ma , Hao Zhang , Masashi Sugiyama

In this paper, we present a Distributionally Robust Markov Decision Process (DRMDP) approach for addressing the dynamic epidemic control problem. The Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model is widely used to represent the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-27 Jun Song , William Yang , Chaoyue Zhao

Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have received significant research interest, offering an alternative to standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that often assume fixed transition probabilities. RMDPs address this by optimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Xinyi Ni , Lifeng Lai

Interval Markov decision processes (IMDPs) generalise classical MDPs by having interval-valued transition probabilities. They provide a powerful modelling tool for probabilistic systems with an additional variation or uncertainty that…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-07-07 Ernst Moritz Hahn , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns , Morteza Lahijanian , Andrea Turrini

We cast episodic Markov decision process (MDP) planning as Bayesian inference over policies. A policy is treated as the latent variable and is assigned an unnormalized probability of optimality that is monotone in its expected return,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-14 David Tolpin

This paper studies a robust continuous-time Markowitz portfolio selection pro\-blem where the model uncertainty carries on the covariance matrix of multiple risky assets. This problem is formulated into a min-max mean-variance problem over…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2017-03-14 Amine Ismail , Huyên Pham

We study the problem of efficient exploration in order to learn an accurate model of an environment, modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP). Efficient exploration in this problem requires the agent to identify the regions in which…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Long-run average rewards provide a mathematically elegant formalism for expressing long term performance. Value iteration (VI)…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-09-01 Pranav Ashok , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Przemyslaw Daca , Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer

Safety is a critical issue in learning-based robotic and autonomous systems as learned information about their environments is often unreliable and inaccurate. In this paper, we propose a risk-aware motion control tool that is robust…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-03-06 Astghik Hakobyan , Insoon Yang

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

This paper develops risk-averse models to support system operators in planning and operating the electricity grid under uncertainty from renewable power generation. We incorporate financial risk hedging using conditional value at risk…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-06 Arash Khojaste , Jonathan Pearce , Daniela Pucci de Farias , Geoffrey Pritchard , Golbon Zakeri

Robust MDPs (RMDPs) can be used to compute policies with provable worst-case guarantees in reinforcement learning. The quality and robustness of an RMDP solution are determined by the ambiguity set---the set of plausible transition…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-21 Marek Petrik , Reazul Hasan Russell

We present a provably safe sampling-based motion planning algorithm for robotic systems affected by random disturbances of unknown distribution. We consider systems with linear or linearizable dynamics evolving in workspace with…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Ibon Gracia , Qi Heng Ho , Luca Laurenti , Morteza Lahijanian

In this paper we investigate the tractability of robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) under various structural assumptions on the uncertainty set. Surprisingly, we show that in all generality (i.e. without any assumption on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-14 Julien Grand-Clément , Nian Si , Shengbo Wang

We are interested in risk constraints for infinite horizon discrete time Markov decision processes (MDPs). Starting with average reward MDPs, we show that increasing concave stochastic dominance constraints on the empirical distribution of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-06-21 William B. Haskell , Rahul Jain

Safely deploying robots in uncertain and dynamic environments requires a systematic accounting of various risks, both within and across layers in an autonomy stack from perception to motion planning and control. Many widely used motion…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-02-10 Venkatraman Renganathan , Iman Shames , Tyler H. Summers

We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-29 Eugene A. Feinberg , Anna Jaśkiewicz , Andrzej S. Nowak

Average-reward Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a foundational framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. However, average-reward MDPs have remained largely unexplored in reinforcement learning (RL) settings, with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-29 Juan Sebastian Rojas , Chi-Guhn Lee

We consider online learning for minimizing regret in unknown, episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous states and actions. We develop variants of the UCRL and posterior sampling algorithms that employ nonparametric Gaussian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-04 Sayak Ray Chowdhury , Aditya Gopalan

This paper expands the notion of robust profit opportunities in financial markets to incorporate distributional uncertainty using Wasserstein distance as the ambiguity measure. Financial markets with risky and risk-free assets are…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2020-06-23 Derek Singh , Shuzhong Zhang