Related papers: On Reward Structures of Markov Decision Processes

Recently regular decision processes have been proposed as a well-behaved form of non-Markov decision process. Regular decision processes are characterised by a transition function and a reward function that depend on the whole history,…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has gained substantial attention across diverse application domains and theoretical investigations. Existing literature on RL theory largely focuses on risk-neutral settings where the decision-maker learns to…

In robust Markov decision processes (MDPs), the uncertainty in the transition kernel is addressed by finding a policy that optimizes the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. While much of the literature has focused on…

In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) with peak constraints, where an agent chooses a policy to optimize an objective and at the same time satisfy additional constraints. The agent has to take…

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 reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov Decision Processes in which an agent repeatedly interacts with an environment that is modeled by a controlled Markov process. At each time step $t$, it earns a reward, and also incurs a…

Average-reward Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a foundational framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. However, average-reward MDPs have remained largely unexplored in reinforcement learning (RL) settings, with…

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…

This paper presents an interpretable reward design framework for reinforcement learning based constrained optimal control problems with state and terminal constraints. The problem is formalized within a standard partially observable Markov…

Reinforcement learning algorithms are typically designed for generic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where any state-action pair can lead to an arbitrary transition distribution. In many practical systems, however, only a subset of the…

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

We consider undiscounted reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs) where both the reward functions and the state-transition probabilities may vary (gradually or abruptly) over time. For this problem setting, we propose an…

The linear Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework offers a principled foundation for reinforcement learning (RL) with strong theoretical guarantees and sample efficiency. However, its restrictive assumption-that both transition dynamics…

Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…

In this paper, we consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with error states. Error states are those states entering which is undesirable or dangerous. We define the risk with respect to a policy as the probability of entering such a state…

We investigate model-based reinforcement learning in contextual Markov decision processes (C-MDPs) in which the context is unobserved and induces confounding in the offline dataset. In such settings, conventional model-learning methods are…

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

In robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), it is assumed that the reward and the transition dynamics lie in a given uncertainty set. By targeting maximal return under the most adversarial model from that set, RMDPs address performance…

Reactive synthesis algorithms allow automatic construction of policies to control an environment modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) that are optimal with respect to high-level temporal logic specifications. However, they assume that…