Related papers: Positivity-hardness results on Markov decision pro…
Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are receiving much attention in learning a robust policy which is less sensitive to environment changes. There are an increasing number of works analyzing sample-efficiency of robust MDPs. However,…
The synthesis problem for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is to compute a policy that satisfies a given specification. Such policies have to take the full execution history of a POMDP into account, rendering the…
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…
We consider two core algorithmic problems for probabilistic verification: the maximal end-component decomposition and the almost-sure reachability set computation for Markov decision processes (MDPs). For MDPs with treewidth $k$, we present…
Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a powerful framework for modeling sequential decision-making problems with model uncertainty. This paper proposes the first first-order framework for solving robust MDPs. Our algorithm interleaves…
The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…
We consider risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the MDP model is influenced by a parameter which takes values in a compact metric space. We identify sufficient conditions under which small perturbations in the model…
We examine a constrained Markov decision process under uncertain transition probabilities, with the uncertainty modeled as deviations from observed transition probabilities. We construct the uncertainty set associated with the deviations…
In offline reinforcement learning (RL), the absence of active exploration calls for attention on the model robustness to tackle the sim-to-real gap, where the discrepancy between the simulated and deployed environments can significantly…
We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…
We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…
We consider multiple parallel Markov decision processes (MDPs) coupled by global constraints, where the time varying objective and constraint functions can only be observed after the decision is made. Special attention is given to how well…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDP) as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in a single state, or in a given set of…
The proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm stands as one of the most prosperous methods in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). Despite its success, the theoretical understanding of PPO remains deficient. Specifically, it is…
We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…
The problem of constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) is investigated, where an agent aims to maximize the expected accumulated discounted reward subject to multiple constraints on its utilities/costs. A new primal-dual approach is…
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…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multi-dimensional weights are useful to analyze systems with multiple objectives that may be conflicting and require the analysis of trade-offs. We study the complexity of percentile queries in such…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…
We consider a robust approach to address uncertainty in model parameters in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), which are widely used to model dynamic optimization in many applications. Most prior works consider the case where the uncertainty…