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A tenet of reinforcement learning is that the agent always observes rewards. However, this is not true in many realistic settings, e.g., a human observer may not always be available to provide rewards, sensors may be limited or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Alireza Kazemipour , Simone Parisi , Matthew E. Taylor , Michael Bowling

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Mridul Agarwal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Mohsen Amiri , Sindri Magnússon

We study reinforcement learning for the optimal control of Branching Markov Decision Processes (BMDPs), a natural extension of (multitype) Branching Markov Chains (BMCs). The state of a (discrete-time) BMCs is a collection of entities of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Ernst Moritz Hahn , Mateo Perez , Sven Schewe , Fabio Somenzi , Ashutosh Trivedi , Dominik Wojtczak

General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small finite state Markov Decision Processes…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2009-12-30 Marcus Hutter

This paper examines a number of solution methods for decision processes with non-Markovian rewards (NMRDPs). They all exploit a temporal logic specification of the reward function to automatically translate the NMRDP into an equivalent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-12-12 Charles Gretton , David Price , Sylvie Thiebaux

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

A decision process in which rewards depend on history rather than merely on the current state is called a decision process with non-Markovian rewards (NMRDP). In decision-theoretic planning, where many desirable behaviours are more…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-09-13 C. Gretton , F. Kabanza , D. Price , J. Slaney , S. Thiebaux

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 (or minimize…

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

Markov Decision Process (MDP) presents a mathematical framework to formulate the learning processes of agents in reinforcement learning. MDP is limited by the Markovian assumption that a reward only depends on the immediate state and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Bohao Qu , Xiaofeng Cao , Jielong Yang , Hechang Chen , Chang Yi , Ivor W. Tsang , Yew-Soon Ong

In this paper, we focus on the problem of robustifying reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with respect to model uncertainties. Indeed, in the framework of model-based RL, we propose to merge the theory of constrained Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Reazul Hasan Russel , Mouhacine Benosman , Jeroen Van Baar

We study online learning in episodic constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the learner aims at collecting as much reward as possible over the episodes, while satisfying some long-term constraints during the learning process.…

In this paper, we use concepts from supervisory control theory of discrete event systems to propose a method to learn optimal control policies for a finite-state Markov Decision Process (MDP) in which (only) certain sequences of actions are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Arun Raman , Keerthan Shagrithaya , Shalabh Bhatnagar

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

Interpretability of reinforcement learning policies is essential for many real-world tasks but learning such interpretable policies is a hard problem. Particularly rule-based policies such as decision trees and rules lists are difficult to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Daniël Vos , Sicco Verwer

In this paper, we investigate the concentration properties of cumulative reward in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), focusing on both asymptotic and non-asymptotic settings. We introduce a unified approach to characterize reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Borna Sayedana , Peter E. Caines , Aditya Mahajan

Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Montaser Mohammedalamen , Michael Bowling

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-07-29 Joseph Y. Halpern , Nan Rong , Ashutosh Saxena

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2010-06-14 Joseph Y. Halpern , Nan Rong , Ashutosh Saxena

We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-14 Jeremy McMahan , Xiaojin Zhu