Related papers: Rectangularity and duality of distributionally rob…

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

Determinantal point processes (DPPs) are elegant probabilistic models of repulsion that arise in quantum physics and random matrix theory. In contrast to traditional structured models like Markov random fields, which become intractable and…

This paper presents a new safety specification method that is robust against errors in the probability distribution of disturbances. Our proposed distributionally robust safe policy maximizes the probability of a system remaining in a…

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

We develop a generic policy gradient method with the global optimality guarantee for robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While policy gradient methods are widely used for solving dynamic decision problems due to their scalable and…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) rely on the key assumption that probability distributions are precisely known. Robust POMDPs (RPOMDPs) alleviate this concern by defining imprecise probabilities, referred to as…

Regular Decision Processes (RDPs) are a recently introduced model that extends MDPs with non-Markovian dynamics and rewards. The non-Markovian behavior is restricted to depend on regular properties of the history. These can be specified…

Learning and optimal control under robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) have received increasing attention, yet most existing theory, algorithms, and applications focus on finite-horizon or discounted models. Long-run average-reward…

We consider an absorbing Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces. We study conditions under which the MDP is uniformly absorbing and the set of occupation measures of the MDP is compact in the usual weak topology. These…

By adopting a distributional viewpoint on law-invariant convex risk measures, we construct dynamics risk measures (DRMs) at the distributional level. We then apply these DRMs to investigate Markov decision processes, incorporating latent…

We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with parameter uncertainty, under the robust MDP paradigm. Previous studies showed that robust MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handle uncertainty, can be solved using dynamic…

Distributionally Robust Optimisation (DRO) protects risk-averse decision-makers by considering the worst-case risk within an ambiguity set of distributions based on the empirical distribution or a model. To further guard against finite,…

We provide a systematic study of the notion of duality of Markov processes with respect to a function. We discuss the relation of this notion with duality with respect to a measure as studied in Markov process theory and potential theory…

Determinantal point processes (DPPs) are probabilistic models for repulsion. When used to represent the occurrence of random subsets of a finite base set, DPPs allow to model global negative associations in a mathematically elegant and…

Structural results impose sufficient conditions on the model parameters of a Markov decision process (MDP) so that the optimal policy is an increasing function of the underlying state. The classical assumptions for MDP structural results…

This paper provides a non-robust interpretation of the distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem by relating the distributional uncertainties to the chance probabilities. Our analysis allows a decision-maker to interpret the size…

This paper studies the problem of distributionally robust model predictive control (MPC) using total variation distance ambiguity sets. For a discrete-time linear system with additive disturbances, we provide a conditional value-at-risk…

Robust Markov decision processes (r-MDPs) extend MDPs by explicitly modelling epistemic uncertainty about transition dynamics. Learning r-MDPs from interactions with an unknown environment enables the synthesis of robust policies with…

It is common to address the curse of dimensionality in Markov decision processes (MDPs) by exploiting low-rank representations. This motivates much of the recent theoretical study on linear MDPs. However, most approaches require a given…

Computational procedures for the stationary probability distribution, the group inverse of the Markovian kernel and the mean first passage times of an irreducible Markov chain, are developed using perturbations. The derivation of these…