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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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zhizuo Chen , Theodore T. Allen

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

We consider the problem of computing optimal policies in average-reward Markov decision processes. This classical problem can be formulated as a linear program directly amenable to saddle-point optimization methods, albeit with a number of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-13 Joan Bas-Serrano , Gergely Neu

This paper deals with unconstrained discounted continuous-time Markov decision processes in Borel state and action spaces. Under some conditions imposed on the primitives, allowing unbounded transition rates and unbounded (from both above…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2011-03-02 Alexey Piunovskiy , Yi Zhang

Value-at-risk (VaR), also known as quantile, is a crucial risk measure in finance and other fields. However, optimizing VaR metrics in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is challenging because VaR is non-additive and the traditional dynamic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-31 Li Xia , Jinyan Pan

We propose and study a general framework for regularized Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected discounted total reward plus a policy regularization term. The extant…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-22 Xiang Li , Wenhao Yang , Zhihua Zhang

We consider the framework of transfer-entropy-regularized Markov Decision Process (TERMDP) in which the weighted sum of the classical state-dependent cost and the transfer entropy from the state random process to the control random process…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-29 Takashi Tanaka , Henrik Sandberg , Mikael Skoglund

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-02-28 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Alan Malek

Most reinforcement learning algorithms are based on a key assumption that Markov decision processes (MDPs) are stationary. However, non-stationary MDPs with dynamic action space are omnipresent in real-world scenarios. Yet problems of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Jiaqi Ye , Xiaodong Li , Pangjing Wu , Feng Wang

A Budgeted Markov Decision Process (BMDP) is an extension of a Markov Decision Process to critical applications requiring safety constraints. It relies on a notion of risk implemented in the shape of a cost signal constrained to lie below…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-29 Nicolas Carrara , Edouard Leurent , Romain Laroche , Tanguy Urvoy , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Olivier Pietquin

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with unknown disturbance distribution and address this problem using the robust Markov decision process (RMDP) approach. We construct the empirical distribution of the unknown disturbance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-11 Sivaramakrishnan Ramani

Online learning algorithms are designed to perform in non-stationary environments, but generally there is no notion of a dynamic state to model constraints on current and future actions as a function of past actions. State-based models are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-09-01 Peng Guan , Maxim Raginsky , Rebecca Willett

We present a method for a certain class of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can relate the optimal policy back to one or more reward sources in the environment. For a given initial state, without fully computing the value function,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Josh Bertram , Peng Wei

Processes (MDPs) often require frequent decision making, that is, taking an action every microsecond, second, or minute. Infinite horizon discount reward formulation is still relevant for a large portion of these applications, because…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-12-17 Yin-Lam Chow , Junjie Qin

We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu , Luca Viano

We consider deterministic Markov decision processes (MDPs) and apply max-plus algebra tools to approximate the value iteration algorithm by a smaller-dimensional iteration based on a representation on dictionaries of value functions. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-21 Francis Bach

We study upper and lower bounds on the sample-complexity of learning near-optimal behaviour in finite-state discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). For the upper bound we make the assumption that each action leads to at most two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-05-17 Tor Lattimore , Marcus Hutter

We study infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the decision maker evaluates each of her strategies by aggregating the infinite stream of expected stage-rewards. The crucial feature of our approach is that the aggregation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-05 János Flesch , Arkadi Predtetchinski , William D Sudderth , Xavier Venel

This work studies a multi-agent Markov decision process (MDP) that can undergo agent dropout and the computation of policies for the post-dropout system based on control and sampling of the pre-dropout system. The central planner's…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-24 Carmel Fiscko , Soummya Kar , Bruno Sinopoli

Deterministic Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) are a mathematical framework for decision-making where the outcomes and future possible actions are deterministically determined by the current action taken. DMDPs can be viewed as a finite…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Jakob de Raaij