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We propose policy gradient algorithms for robust infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with non-rectangular uncertainty sets, thereby addressing an open challenge in the robust MDP literature. Indeed, uncertainty sets that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Mengmeng Li , Daniel Kuhn , Tobias Sutter

Policy Mirror Descent (PMD) is a general family of algorithms that covers a wide range of novel and fundamental methods in reinforcement learning. Motivated by the instability of policy iteration (PI) with inexact policy evaluation, PMD…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-23 Emmeran Johnson , Ciara Pike-Burke , Patrick Rebeschini

Many control problems in environments that can be modeled as Markov decision processes (MDPs) concern infinite-time horizon specifications. The classical aim in this context is to compute a control policy that maximizes the probability of…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-05-03 Ruediger Ehlers , Salar Moarref , Ufuk Topcu

Value iteration is a well-known method of solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that is simple to implement and boasts strong theoretical convergence guarantees. However, the computational cost of value iteration quickly becomes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-26 Guanting Chen , Johann Demetrio Gaebler , Matt Peng , Chunlin Sun , Yinyu Ye

This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-18 Fei Wu , Erik Demeulemeester , Jannik Matuschke

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model stochastic systems in many applications. Several efficient algorithms to compute optimal policies have been studied in the literature, including value iteration (VI) and policy iteration.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-30 Vineet Goyal , Julien Grand-Clement

A basic model in sequential decision making is the Markov decision process (MDP), which is extended to Robust MDPs (RMDPs) by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case transition probabilities…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Alipasha Montaseri , Ali Shafiee

Policy iteration is a family of algorithms that are used to find an optimal policy for a given Markov Decision Problem (MDP). Simple Policy iteration (SPI) is a type of policy iteration where the strategy is to change the policy at exactly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Sarthak Consul , Bhishma Dedhia , Kumar Ashutosh , Parthasarathi Khirwadkar

Regularization of control policies using entropy can be instrumental in adjusting predictability of real-world systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from, e.g., cybersecurity, which aims at maximal unpredictability, to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-18 Menno van Zutphen , Giannis Delimpaltadakis , Maurice Heemels , Duarte Antunes

In this work, we study algorithms for learning in infinite-horizon undiscounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) with function approximation. We first show that the regret analysis of the Politex algorithm (a version of regularized policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Nevena Lazic , Dong Yin , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Csaba Szepesvari

We study the problem of learning optimal policies in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) using low-rank reinforcement learning (RL) methods. In finite-horizon MDPs, the policies, and therefore the value functions (VFs) are not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Sergio Rozada , Jose Luis Orejuela , Antonio G. Marques

Value iteration is a fundamental algorithm for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). It computes the maximal $n$-step payoff by iterating $n$ times a recurrence equation which is naturally associated to the MDP. At the same time, value…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-04-30 Nikhil Balaji , Stefan Kiefer , Petr Novotný , Guillermo A. Pérez , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

We study an approach to policy selection for large relational Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We consider a variant of approximate policy iteration (API) that replaces the usual value-function learning step with a learning step in policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-09-13 A. Fern , R. Givan , S. Yoon

Recent progress in randomized motion planners has led to the development of a new class of sampling-based algorithms that provide asymptotic optimality guarantees, notably the RRT* and the PRM* algorithms. Careful analysis reveals that the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2016-09-21 Oktay Arslan , Panagiotis Tsiotras

The online Markov decision process (MDP) is a generalization of the classical Markov decision process that incorporates changing reward functions. In this paper, we propose practical online MDP algorithms with policy iteration and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-16 Yao Ma , Hao Zhang , Masashi Sugiyama

Calculating optimal policies is known to be computationally difficult for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces. This paper studies finite-state approximations of discrete time Markov decision processes with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-09-23 Naci Saldi , Serdar Yüksel , Tamás Linder

Current work in explainable reinforcement learning generally produces policies in the form of a decision tree over the state space. Such policies can be used for formal safety verification, agent behavior prediction, and manual inspection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Nicholay Topin , Stephanie Milani , Fei Fang , Manuela Veloso

Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning. Yet, the nonconvexity of policy optimization poses significant challenges in understanding the global convergence of policy gradient methods. For a class of finite-horizon…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-10 Xin Chen , Yifan Hu , Minda Zhao

Recent non-asymptotic analyses have substantially advanced the theory of distributional policy evaluation, but they largely concern synchronous full-state updates under a generative model, model-based estimators, accelerated variants, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ege C. Kaya , Abolfazl Hashemi

We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on Policy Search algorithms, that compute an approximately optimal policy by following the standard Policy Iteration (PI)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-06-04 Bruno Scherrer