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We consider the challenge of finding a deterministic policy for a Markov decision process that uniformly (in all states) maximizes one reward subject to a probabilistic constraint over a different reward. Existing solutions do not fully…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-21 Jaeyoung Lee , Sean Sedwards , Krzysztof Czarnecki

Although Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found tremendous success in simulated domains, they often cannot directly be applied to physical systems, especially in cases where there are hard constraints to satisfy (e.g. on safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-28 Harsh Satija , Philip Amortila , Joelle Pineau

We study the problem of minimizing non-convex functionals on the space of probability measures, regularized by the relative entropy (KL divergence) with respect to a fixed reference measure, as well as the corresponding problem of solving…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Razvan-Andrei Lascu , Mateusz B. Majka

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

In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-26 Simon Dima , Simon Fischer , Jobst Heitzig , Joss Oliver

This paper deals with the unconstrained and constrained cases for continuous-time Markov decision processes under the finite-horizon expected total cost criterion. The state space is denumerable and the transition and cost rates are allowed…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-08-26 Qingda Wei , Xian Chen

Many recent successful (deep) reinforcement learning algorithms make use of regularization, generally based on entropy or Kullback-Leibler divergence. We propose a general theory of regularized Markov Decision Processes that generalizes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-05 Matthieu Geist , Bruno Scherrer , Olivier Pietquin

A common formulation of constrained reinforcement learning involves multiple rewards that must individually accumulate to given thresholds. In this class of problems, we show a simple example in which the desired optimal policy cannot be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-22 Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Santiago Paternain , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Alejandro Ribeiro

Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Montaser Mohammedalamen , Michael Bowling

The first aims of this work are to endorse the advent of finitely additive set functions as equilibrium states and the possibility to replace the metric entropy by an upper semi-continuous map associated to a general variational principle.…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2022-04-07 Andrzej Bis , Maria Carvalho , Miguel Mendes , Paulo Varandas

In this article, we consider the deterministic impulsively controlled system with infinite horizon and several discounted objective functionals. The constructed optimal control problem with functional constraints is reformulated as a Markov…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 A. Piunovskiy

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) aim to handle changing or partially known system dynamics. To solve them, one typically resorts to robust optimization methods. However, this significantly increases computational complexity and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-14 Esther Derman , Yevgeniy Men , Matthieu Geist , Shie Mannor

This paper is devoted to studying the average optimality in continuous-time Markov decision processes with fairly general state and action spaces. The criterion to be maximized is expected average rewards. The transition rates of underlying…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Xianping Guo , Ulrich Rieder

We present an elementary state augmentation method for a class of static risk measure applied to the total cost for both Markov decision processes and stochastic optimal control, such that dynamic programming equations can be derived on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Cristian Chávez , Yan Li

This paper presents a constrained-optimization formulation for the prioritized execution of learned robot tasks. The framework lends itself to the execution of tasks encoded by value functions, such as tasks learned using the reinforcement…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-01-16 Gennaro Notomista

This paper examines reinforcement learning (RL) in infinite-horizon decision processes with almost-sure safety constraints, crucial for applications like autonomous systems, finance, and resource management. We propose a doubly-regularized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Pekka Malo , Lauri Viitasaari , Antti Suominen , Eeva Vilkkumaa , Olli Tahvonen

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Mridul Agarwal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Capacity constrained optimal transport is a variant of optimal transport, which adds extra constraints on the set of feasible couplings in the original optimal transport problem to limit the mass transported between each pair of source and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-13 Tianhao Wu , Qihao Cheng , Zihao Wang , Chaorui Zhang , Bo Bai , Zhongyi Huang , Hao Wu

Density function describes the density of states in the state space of a dynamic system or a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Its evolution follows the Liouville equation. We show that the density function is the dual of the value function in…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-11-11 Yuxiao Chen , Aaron D. Ames

We study the error introduced by entropy regularization in infinite-horizon discrete discounted Markov decision processes. We show that this error decreases exponentially in the inverse regularization strength, both in a weighted…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-16 Johannes Müller , Semih Cayci