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In many practical settings control decisions must be made under partial/imperfect information about the evolution of a relevant state variable. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) is a relatively well-developed framework…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-30 Yanling Chang , Alfredo Garcia , Zhide Wang , Lu Sun

We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a fundamental model for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. However, many verification and synthesis problems for POMDPs are undecidable or intractable. Most prominently,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Nathanaël Fijalkow , Arka Ghosh , Roman Kniazev , Guillermo A. Pérez , Pierre Vandenhove

We consider the problem of solving robust Markov decision process (MDP), which involves a set of discounted, finite state, finite action space MDPs with uncertain transition kernels. The goal of planning is to find a robust policy that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Yan Li , Guanghui Lan , Tuo Zhao

Representations are at the core of all deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods for both Markov decision processes (MDPs) and partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). Many representation learning methods and theoretical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-23 Tianwei Ni , Benjamin Eysenbach , Erfan Seyedsalehi , Michel Ma , Clement Gehring , Aditya Mahajan , Pierre-Luc Bacon

We study learning in periodic Markov Decision Process(MDP), a special type of non-stationary MDP where both the state transition probabilities and reward functions vary periodically, under the average reward maximization setting. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Ayush Aniket , Arpan Chattopadhyay

We tackle the problem of acting in an unknown finite and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) for which the expected shortest path from any state to any other state is bounded by a finite number $D$. An MDP consists of $S$ states and $A$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Aristide Tossou , Christos Dimitrakakis , Debabrota Basu

Cumulative prospect theory (CPT) is the first theory for decision-making under uncertainty that combines full theoretical soundness and empirically realistic features [P.P. Wakker - Prospect theory: For risk and ambiguity, Page 2]. While…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Thomas Brihaye , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Stefanie Mohr , Maximilian Weininger

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese

Fueled by advances in both robust optimization theory and reinforcement learning (RL), robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have garnered increasing attention due to their powerful capability for sequential decision-making under…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-08 Wenfan Ou , Sheng Bi

This paper addresses the problem of optimal control of robotic sensing systems aimed at autonomous information gathering in scenarios such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and surveillance and reconnaissance. The information…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2016-01-28 Mikko Lauri , Nikolay Atanasov , George J. Pappas , Risto Ritala

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) in which the transition probabilities and rewards belong to an uncertainty set parametrized by a collection of random variables. The probability distributions for these random parameters are…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu

We study infinite-horizon robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) on continuous state spaces with structured rectangular ambiguity set. The proposed ambiguity set falls within the convex hull of unknown generating kernels. We utilize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Mengmeng Li , Yifan Hu , Daniel Kuhn , Yan Li

We study the piecewise stationary combinatorial semi-bandit problem with causally related rewards. In our nonstationary environment, variations in the base arms' distributions, causal relationships between rewards, or both, change the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-27 Behzad Nourani-Koliji , Steven Bilaj , Amir Rezaei Balef , Setareh Maghsudi

The paper considers the problem of global optimization in the setup of stochastic process bandits. We introduce an UCB algorithm which builds a cascade of discretization trees based on generic chaining in order to render possible his…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-02-22 Emile Contal , Nicolas Vayatis

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Shuchi Chawla , Dimitris Christou , Amit Harlev , Ziv Scully

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-11 Marnix Suilen , Thom Badings , Eline M. Bovy , David Parker , Nils Jansen

Dealing with Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes is notably a challenging task. We face an average-reward infinite-horizon POMDP setting with an unknown transition model, where we assume the knowledge of the observation model.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-03 Alessio Russo , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

Predictive state representations (PSRs) are models of controlled non-Markov observation sequences which exhibit the same generative process governing POMDP observations without relying on an underlying latent state. In that respect, a PSR…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-01 Andrea Baisero , Christopher Amato

It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-16 Guido Montufar , Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi , Nihat Ay