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Memoryless and finite-memory policies offer a practical alternative for solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), as they operate directly in the output space rather than in the high-dimensional belief space. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-15 Roy van Zuijlen , Duarte Antunes

We consider turn-based stochastic two-player games with a combination of a parity condition that must hold surely, that is in all possible outcomes, and of a parity condition that must hold almost-surely, that is with probability 1. The…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Laurent Doyen , Shibashis Guha

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-08 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese

We study discrete probabilistic programs with potentially unbounded looping behaviors over an infinite state space. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first decidability result for the problem of determining whether such a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Mingshuai Chen , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Lutz Klinkenberg , Tobias Winkler

Motivated by applications where impatience is pervasive and evaluation times are uncertain, we study a selection model where options may expire at an unknown point in time and evaluation times are stochastic. Initially, the decision-maker…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-05 Yihua Xu , Rohan Ghuge , Sebastian Perez-Salazar

In automata theory, while determinisation provides a standard route to solving many common problems in automata theory, some weak forms of nondeterminism can be dealt with in some problems without costly determinisation. For example, the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Thomas A. Henzinger , Keya Prakash , K. S. Thejaswini

We propose an algorithm for deterministic continuous Markov Decision Processes with sparse rewards that computes the optimal policy exactly with no dependency on the size of the state space. The algorithm has time complexity of $O( |R|^3…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-21 Joshua R. Bertram , Peng Wei

We define a language-independent model of nondeterministic quantum programs in which a quantum program consists of a finite set of quantum processes. These processes are represented by quantum Markov chains over the common state space. An…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2012-01-05 Yangjia Li , Nengkun Yu , Mingsheng Ying

We present an algorithmic method for the quantitative, performance-aware synthesis of concurrent programs. The input consists of a nondeterministic partial program and of a parametric performance model. The nondeterminism allows the…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Pavol Cerny , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Thomas Henzinger , Arjun Radhakrishna , Rohit Singh

The ability to compute reward-optimal policies for given and known finite Markov decision processes (MDPs) underpins a variety of applications across planning, controller synthesis, and verification. However, we often want policies (1) to…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Linus Heck , Filip Macák , Milan Češka , Sebastian Junges

Nondeterministic choice is a useful program construct that provides a way to describe the behaviour of a program without specifying the details of possible implementations. It supports the stepwise refinement of programs, a method that has…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-02-17 Yuan Feng , Yingte Xu

In this paper, we consider algorithms to decide the existence of strategies in MDPs for Boolean combinations of objectives. These objectives are omega-regular properties that need to be enforced either surely, almost surely, existentially,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-04-30 Raphaël Berthon , Shibashis Guha , Jean-François Raskin

Automatic verification of concurrent programs faces state explosion due to the exponential possible interleavings of its sequential components coupled with large or infinite state spaces. An alternative is deductive verification, where…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Yuan Xia , Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh , Mukund Raghothaman , Srivatsan Ravi

We study the problem of completely automatically verifying uninterpreted programs---programs that work over arbitrary data models that provide an interpretation for the constants, functions and relations the program uses. The verification…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2020-08-27 Umang Mathur , P. Madhusudan , Mahesh Viswanathan

We consider parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs) that are augmented with unknown probability distributions over parameter values. The problem is to compute the probability to satisfy a temporal logic specification with any concrete…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Thom Badings , Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ufuk Topcu

The extension of classical imperative programs with real-valued random variables and random branching gives rise to probabilistic programs. The termination problem is one of the most fundamental liveness properties for such programs. The…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-08-09 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady , Petr Novotný , Jiři Zárevúcky , Đorđe Žikelić

Markov decision processes (MDP) are finite-state systems with both strategic and probabilistic choices. After fixing a strategy, an MDP produces a sequence of probability distributions over states. The sequence is eventually synchronizing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-11-01 Laurent Doyen , Thierry Massart , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

We introduce the concept of structured synthesis for Markov decision processes where the structure is induced from finitely many pre-specified options for a system configuration. The resulting synthesis problem is in general a nonlinear…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-07-18 Nils Jansen , Laura Humphrey , Jana Tumova , Ufuk Topcu

This paper proposes a finitely terminating algorithm to solve reach-and-stay control problems for nonlinear systems. The algorithm is guaranteed to return a control strategy if the specification is robustly realizable. Such a feature is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-17 Yinan Li , Jun Liu

One of the most fundamental problems in Markov decision processes is analysis and control synthesis for safety and reachability specifications. We consider the stochastic reach-avoid problem, in which the objective is to synthesize a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-10-09 Nikolaos Kariotoglou , Maryam Kamgarpour , Tyler Summers , John Lygeros