Related papers: A Practitioner's Guide to MDP Model Checking Algor…
In this paper we provide faster algorithms for approximately solving discounted Markov Decision Processes in multiple parameter regimes. Given a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) with $|S|$ states, $|A|$ actions, discount factor…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a classical model for decision making in the presence of uncertainty. Often they are viewed as state transformers with planning objectives defined with respect to paths over MDP states. An increasingly…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…
In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model in sequential decision making. Robust MDPs (RMDPs) extend this framework by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case realization of that…
The key assumption underlying linear Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) is that the learner has access to a known feature map $\phi(x, a)$ that maps state-action pairs to $d$-dimensional vectors, and that the rewards and transitions are…
Markov decision processes are useful models of concurrency optimisation problems, but are often intractable for exhaustive verification methods. Recent work has introduced lightweight approximative techniques that sample directly from…
Regularization of control policies using entropy can be instrumental in adjusting predictability of real-world systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from, e.g., cybersecurity, which aims at maximal unpredictability, to…
Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are powerful models for sequential decision making under transition and observation uncertainties. This paper studies the challenging yet important problem in POMDPs known as the…
We build on a recently introduced geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to analyze classical MDP-solving algorithms: Value Iteration (VI) and Policy Iteration (PI). First, we develop a geometry-based analytical…
We study the policy testing problem in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the fixed-confidence setting under a generative model with static sampling. The goal is to decide whether the value of a given policy exceeds a specified…
This paper shows that the optimal policy and value functions of a Markov Decision Process (MDP), either discounted or not, can be captured by a finite-horizon undiscounted Optimal Control Problem (OCP), even if based on an inexact model.…
Policy Iteration (PI) is a widely used family of algorithms to compute optimal policies for Markov Decision Problems (MDPs). We derive upper bounds on the running time of PI on Deterministic MDPs (DMDPs): the class of MDPs in which every…
This tutorial paper presents a hands-on perspective on probabilistic model checking with the Storm model checker. Storm is a decade-old model checker that excels in performance and a rich Python-based ecosystem, which makes it easy to…
Markov chains and Markov decision processes (MDPs) are well-established probabilistic models. While finite Markov models are well-understood, analysing their infinite counterparts remains a significant challenge. Decisiveness has proven to…
Markov decision processes (MDP) and continuous-time MDP (CTMDP) are the fundamental models for non-deterministic systems with probabilistic uncertainty. Mean payoff (a.k.a. long-run average reward) is one of the most classic objectives…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multiple limit-average (or mean-payoff) objectives. There exist two different views: (i) the expectation semantics, where the goal is to optimize the expected mean-payoff objective, and (ii)…
This article presents the complexity of reachability decision problems for parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs), an extension to Markov decision processes (MDPs) where transitions probabilities are described by polynomials over a…
Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) allow to compute reliable solutions for dynamic decision problems whose evolution is modeled by rewards and partially-known transition probabilities. Unfortunately, accounting for uncertainty in the…
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…