Related papers: Unbounded Markov Dynamic Programming with Weighted…
We introduce the Lyapunov approach to optimal control problems of average risk-sensitive Markov control processes with general risk maps. Motivated by applications in particular to behavioral economics, we consider possibly non-convex risk…
Constrained discrete optimization problems are encountered in many areas of communication and machine learning. We consider the case where the objective function satisfies Bellman's optimality principle without the constraints on which we…
In this paper we consider the problem of distributed nonlinear optimisation of a separable convex cost function over a graph subject to cone constraints. We show how to generalise, using convex analysis, monotone operator theory and…
We prove a central limit theorem for a class of additive processes that arise naturally in the theory of finite horizon Markov decision problems. The main theorem generalizes a classic result of Dobrushin (1956) for temporally…
This papers deals with the constrained discounted control of piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMPs) in general Borel spaces. The control variable acts on the jump rate and transition measure, and the goal is to minimize the total…
We study the problem of estimating the fixed point of a contractive operator defined on a separable Banach space. Focusing on a stochastic query model that provides noisy evaluations of the operator, we analyze a variance-reduced stochastic…
This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…
This note summarizes the optimization formulations used in the study of Markov decision processes. We consider both the discounted and undiscounted processes under the standard and the entropy-regularized settings. For each setting, we…
Pontryagin type maximum principle and Bellman's dynamic programming principle serve as two of the most important tools in solving optimal control problems. There is a huge literature on the study of relationship between them. The main…
In many branches of engineering, Banach contraction mapping theorem is employed to establish the convergence of certain deterministic algorithms. Randomized versions of these algorithms have been developed that have proved useful in…
We study computationally and statistically efficient Reinforcement Learning algorithms for the linear Bellman Complete setting. This setting uses linear function approximation to capture value functions and unifies existing models like…
This paper studies a Markov network model for unbalanced data, aiming to solve the problems of classification bias and insufficient minority class recognition ability of traditional machine learning models in environments with uneven class…
We consider stochastic dynamic programming problems with high-dimensional, discrete state-spaces and finite, discrete-time horizons that prohibit direct computation of the value function from a given Bellman equation for all states and time…
In this paper, we consider the discounted continuous-time Markov decision process (CTMDP) with a lower bounding function. In this model, the negative part of each cost rate is bounded by the drift function, say $w$, whereas the positive…
We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…
We study value-iteration (VI) algorithms for solving general (a.k.a. multichain) Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the average-reward criterion, a fundamental but theoretically challenging setting. Beyond the difficulties inherent to…
This note provides upper bounds on the number of operations required to compute by value iterations a nearly optimal policy for an infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision process with a finite number of states and actions. For a given…
Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) has become a well established method for unconstrained trajectory optimization. Despite its several applications in robotics and controls however, a widely successful constrained version of the…
When function approximation is used, solving the Bellman optimality equation with stability guarantees has remained a major open problem in reinforcement learning for decades. The fundamental difficulty is that the Bellman operator may…
Universal bounds for the potential energy of weighted spherical codes are obtained by linear programming. The universality is in the sense of Cohn-Kumar -- every attaining code is optimal with respect to a large class of potential functions…