Related papers: Optimal Sensor and Actuator Selection for Factored…
In cyber-physical systems such as automobiles, measurement data from sensor nodes should be delivered to other consumer nodes such as actuators in a regular fashion. But, in practical systems over unreliable media such as wireless, it is a…
We consider risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the MDP model is influenced by a parameter which takes values in a compact metric space. We identify sufficient conditions under which small perturbations in the model…
Models of many real-life applications, such as queuing models of communication networks or computing systems, have a countably infinite state-space. Algorithmic and learning procedures that have been developed to produce optimal policies…
We study the problem of efficient exploration in order to learn an accurate model of an environment, modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP). Efficient exploration in this problem requires the agent to identify the regions in which…
Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a fundamental framework for decision-making under uncertainty and partial observability. Since in general optimal policies may require infinite memory, they are hard to implement…
Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is highly intractable in general, at least in part because the optimal policy may be infinitely large. In this paper, we explore the problem of finding the optimal policy from…
Autonomous systems often have logical constraints arising, for example, from safety, operational, or regulatory requirements. Such constraints can be expressed using temporal logic specifications. The system state is often partially…
Practical reinforcement learning problems are often formulated as constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problems, in which the agent has to maximize the expected return while satisfying a set of prescribed safety constraints. In this…
We develop greedy algorithms to approximate the optimal solution to the multi-fidelity sensor selection problem, which is a cost constrained optimization problem prescribing the placement and number of cheap (low signal-to-noise) and…
In the optimization of dynamic systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers the peak Constrained Markov Decision Process (PCMDP), where…
In classical reinforcement learning, when exploring an environment, agents accept arbitrary short term loss for long term gain. This is infeasible for safety critical applications, such as robotics, where even a single unsafe action may…
We introduce a framework for approximate analysis of Markov decision processes (MDP) with bounded-, unbounded-, and infinite-horizon properties. The main idea is to identify a "core" of an MDP, i.e., a subsystem where we provably remain…
We consider the problem of constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) where an agent interacts with a unichain Markov Decision Process. At every interaction, the agent obtains a reward. Further, there are $K$ cost functions. The agent aims…
We study upper and lower bounds on the sample-complexity of learning near-optimal behaviour in finite-state discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). For the upper bound we make the assumption that each action leads to at most two…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide a modeling framework for autonomous decision making under uncertainty and imperfect sensing, e.g. robot manipulation and self-driving cars. However, optimal control of POMDPs…
Mixed observable Markov decision processes (MOMDPs) are a modeling framework for autonomous systems described by both fully and partially observable states. In this work, we study the problem of synthesizing a control policy for MOMDPs that…
In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…
Planning problems are hard, motion planning, for example, isPSPACE-hard. Such problems are even more difficult in the presence of uncertainty. Although, Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) provide a formal framework for such problems, finding…
In many practical applications, decision-making processes must balance the costs of acquiring information with the benefits it provides. Traditional control systems often assume full observability, an unrealistic assumption when…
We give polynomial time algorithms for quantitative (and qualitative) reachability analysis for Branching Markov Decision Processes (BMDPs). Specifically, given a BMDP, and given an initial population, where the objective of the controller…