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Approximate dynamic programming is a popular method for solving large Markov decision processes. This paper describes a new class of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods- distributionally robust ADP-that address the curse of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-05-22 Marek Petrik

Several real-world scenarios, such as remote control and sensing, are comprised of action and observation delays. The presence of delays degrades the performance of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, often to such an extent that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-18 Somjit Nath , Mayank Baranwal , Harshad Khadilkar

We study the relation between different Markov Decision Process (MDP) frameworks in the machine learning and econometrics literatures, including the standard MDP, the entropy and general regularized MDP, and stochastic MDP, where the latter…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-19 Tien Mai , Patrick Jaillet

We study the setting of \emph{performative reinforcement learning} where the deployed policy affects both the reward, and the transition of the underlying Markov decision process. Prior work~\parencite{MTR23} has addressed this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

Most reinforcement learning methods are based upon the key assumption that the transition dynamics and reward functions are fixed, that is, the underlying Markov decision process is stationary. However, in many real-world applications, this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-23 Yash Chandak , Georgios Theocharous , Shiv Shankar , Martha White , Sridhar Mahadevan , Philip S. Thomas

We propose a general framework for entropy-regularized average-reward reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs). Our approach is based on extending the linear-programming formulation of policy optimization in MDPs to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-23 Gergely Neu , Anders Jonsson , Vicenç Gómez

Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) are a widely used framework for sequential decision-making under parameter uncertainty. RMDPs have been extensively studied when the objective is to maximize the discounted return, but little is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-15 Julien Grand-Clément , Marek Petrik , Nicolas Vieille

In this work, we study dynamic programming (DP) algorithms for partially observable Markov decision processes with jointly continuous and discrete state-spaces. We consider a class of stochastic systems which have coupled discrete and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-07 Donghwan Lee , Niao He , Jianghai Hu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-11 Pratik Gajane , Ronald Ortner , Peter Auer

We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-08 Hyeong Soo Chang

This paper is devoted to studying constrained continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the class of randomized policies depending on state histories. The transition rates may be unbounded, the reward and costs are admitted to be…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-01-04 Xianping Guo , Xinyuan Song

In the Markov decision process model, policies are usually evaluated by expected cumulative rewards. As this decision criterion is not always suitable, we propose in this paper an algorithm for computing a policy optimal for the quantile…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-12-02 Hugo Gilbert , Paul Weng , Yan Xu

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are standard models for dynamic systems with probabilistic and nondeterministic behaviour in uncertain environments. We prove that in POMDPs with long-run average objective, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-29 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Raimundo Saona , Bruno Ziliotto

Markov Decision Processes (Mdps) form a versatile framework used to model a wide range of optimization problems. The Mdp model consists of sets of states, actions, time steps, rewards, and probability transitions. When in a given state and…

A Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a popular model for reinforcement learning. However, its commonly used assumption of stationary dynamics and rewards is too stringent and fails to hold in adversarial, nonstationary, or multi-agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-22 Tiancheng Yu , Suvrit Sra

Most known regret bounds for reinforcement learning are either episodic or assume an environment without traps. We derive a regret bound without making either assumption, by allowing the algorithm to occasionally delegate an action to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-22 Vanessa Kosoy

We consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with deterministic transitions and study the problem of regret minimization, which is central to the analysis and design of optimal learning algorithms. We present logarithmic problem-specific…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Damianos Tranos , Alexandre Proutiere

We consider a new form of reinforcement learning (RL) that is based on opportunities to directly learn the optimal control policy and a general Markov decision process (MDP) framework devised to support these opportunities. Derivations of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-02 Yingdong Lu , Mark S. Squillante , Chai Wah Wu

Multi-objective optimization models that encode ordered sequential constraints provide a solution to model various challenging problems including encoding preferences, modeling a curriculum, and enforcing measures of safety. A recently…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-09-16 Kyle Hollins Wray , Stas Tiomkin , Mykel J. Kochenderfer , Pieter Abbeel

Diffusion models excel at sampling from complex, unnormalized distributions. In this work, we extend Maximum Entropy Reinforcement Learning (ME-RL) to diffusion processes, enabling sampling from the optimal policy trajectory distribution.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Sebastian Sanokowski , Kaustubh Patil