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We propose a formulation of the stochastic cutting stock problem as a discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision process. At each decision epoch, given current inventory of items, an agent chooses in which patterns to cut objects in stock…
Optimal decision-making under partial observability requires agents to balance reducing uncertainty (exploration) against pursuing immediate objectives (exploitation). In this paper, we introduce a novel policy optimization framework for…
This paper presents a novel method of global adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) for the adaptive optimal control of nonlinear polynomial systems. The strategy consists of relaxing the problem of solving the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB)…
Approximate dynamic programming is a popular method for solving large Markov decision processes. This paper describes a new class of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods- distributionally robust ADP-that address the curse of…
This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized…
In this paper we extend dynamic programming techniques to the study of discrete-time infinite horizon optimal control problems on compact control invariant sets with state-independent best asymptotic average cost. To this end we analyse the…
In this paper we consider discrete time stochastic optimal control problems over infinite and finite time horizons. We show that for a large class of such problems the Taylor polynomials of the solutions to the associated Dynamic…
We seek to learn an effective policy for a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with continuous states via Q-Learning. Given a set of basis functions over state action pairs we search for a corresponding set of linear weights that minimizes the…
Model predictive control (MPC) is a powerful framework for optimal control of dynamical systems. However, MPC solvers suffer from a high computational burden that restricts their application to systems with low sampling frequency. This…
We study an approximation method for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with continuous spaces. Belief MDP reduction, which has been the standard approach to study POMDPs requires rigorous approximation methods for…
The deployment of autonomous systems in safety-critical environments requires control policies that guarantee satisfaction of complex control specifications. These systems are commonly modeled as nonlinear discrete-time stochastic systems.…
Dynamic programming (DP) is a fundamental tool used across many engineering fields. The main goal of DP is to solve Bellman's optimality equations for a given Markov decision process (MDP). Standard methods like policy iteration exploit the…
We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays there for a…
We consider non-standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the target function is not only a simple expectation of the accumulated reward. Instead, we consider rather general functionals of the joint distribution of terminal state and…
Robust Model Predictive Control (MPC) for nonlinear systems is a problem that poses significant challenges as highlighted by the diversity of approaches proposed in the last decades. Often compromises with respect to computational load,…
We study the time-bounded reachability problem for continuous-time Markov decision processes (CTMDPs) and games (CTMGs). Existing techniques for this problem use discretisation techniques to break time into discrete intervals, and optimal…
We study the online estimation of the optimal policy of a Markov decision process (MDP). We propose a class of Stochastic Primal-Dual (SPD) methods which exploit the inherent minimax duality of Bellman equations. The SPD methods update a…
We consider the problem of controlling a Markov decision process (MDP) with a large state space, so as to minimize average cost. Since it is intractable to compete with the optimal policy for large scale problems, we pursue the more modest…
Least squares Monte Carlo methods are a popular numerical approximation method for solving stochastic control problems. Based on dynamic programming, their key feature is the approximation of the conditional expectation of future rewards by…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…