Related papers: Stopping Criteria for Value Iteration on Stochasti…

The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…

We propose a new complexity measure for Markov decision processes (MDPs), the maximum expected hitting cost (MEHC). This measure tightens the closely related notion of diameter [JOA10] by accounting for the reward structure. We show that…

We study the computational complexity of the infinite-horizon discounted-reward Markov Decision Problem (MDP) with a finite state space $|\mathcal{S}|$ and a finite action space $|\mathcal{A}|$. We show that any randomized algorithm needs a…

We study online learning in episodic constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the learner aims at collecting as much reward as possible over the episodes, while satisfying some long-term constraints during the learning process.…

Value decomposition has long been a fundamental technique in multi-agent dynamic programming and reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, the value function of a global state $(s_1,s_2,\ldots,s_N)$ is often approximated as the sum of…

We consider lexicographic bi-objective problems on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where we optimize one objective while guaranteeing optimality of another. We propose a two-stage technique for solving such problems when the objectives…

We consider (stochastic) softmax policy gradient (PG) methods for bandits and tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs). While the PG objective is non-concave, recent research has used the objective's smoothness and gradient domination…

In many multi-player interactions, players incur strictly positive costs each time they execute actions e.g. 'menu costs' or transaction costs in financial systems. Since acting at each available opportunity would accumulate prohibitively…

In this work, we study discrete-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) under constraints with Borel state and action spaces and where all the performance functions have the same form of the expected total reward (ETR) criterion over the…

Most of the real-time implementations of the stabilizing optimal control actions suffer from the necessity to provide high computational effort. This paper presents a cutting-edge approach for real-time evaluation of linear-quadratic model…

Algorithms developed under stationary Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) often face challenges in non-stationary environments, and infinite-horizon formulations may not directly apply to finite-horizon tasks. To address these limitations, we…

Recently, Sidford, Wang, Wu and Ye (2018) developed an algorithm combining variance reduction techniques with value iteration to solve discounted Markov decision processes. This algorithm has a sublinear complexity when the discount factor…

In reinforcement learning, the reward function on current state and action is widely used. When the objective is about the expectation of the (discounted) total reward only, it works perfectly. However, if the objective involves the total…

In this paper, we propose a new policy iteration algorithm to compute the value function and the optimal controls of continuous time stochastic control problems. The algorithm relies on successive approximations using linear-quadratic…

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…

Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) generalize classical MDPs that consider uncertainties in transition probabilities by defining a set of possible transition functions. An objective is a set of runs (or infinite trajectories) of the…

We consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the rewards are unknown and may change in an adversarial manner. We provide an algorithm that achieves state-of-the-art regret bound of $O( \sqrt{\tau (\ln|S|+\ln|A|)T}\ln(T))$, where $S$…

Markov decision process (MDP) is a decision making framework where a decision maker is interested in maximizing the expected discounted value of a stream of rewards received at future stages at various states which are visited according to…

We study deterministic games of infinite duration played on graphs and focus on the strategy complexity of quantitative objectives. Such games are known to admit optimal memoryless strategies over finite graphs, but require infinite-memory…

Howard's Policy Iteration (HPI) is a classic algorithm for solving Markov Decision Problems (MDPs). HPI uses a "greedy" switching rule to update from any non-optimal policy to a dominating one, iterating until an optimal policy is found.…