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In Optimal Transport (OT) on a finite metric space, one defines a distance on the probability simplex that extends the distance on the ground space. The distance is the value of a Linear Programming (LP) problem on the set of…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-01-14 Giovanni Pistone , Fabio Rapallo , Maria Piera Rogantin

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Alekh Agarwal , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Gaurav Mahajan

This paper investigates model robustness in reinforcement learning (RL) to reduce the sim-to-real gap in practice. We adopt the framework of distributionally robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), aimed at learning a policy that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Laixi Shi , Gen Li , Yuting Wei , Yuxin Chen , Matthieu Geist , Yuejie Chi

Discrete-time Markov Chains (MCs) and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are two standard formalisms in system analysis. Their main associated quantitative objectives are hitting probabilities, discounted sum, and mean payoff. Although there…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-04-21 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Amir Kafshdar Goharshady , Kiarash Mohammadi , Andreas Pavlogiannis

Markov chain model is widely applied in many fields, especially the field of prediction. The classical Discrete-time Markov chain(DTMC) is a widely used method for prediction. However, the classical DTMC model has some limitation when the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-03-07 Zichang He , Wen Jiang

Preliminary low-thrust spacecraft mission design is a global search problem characterized by a complex solution landscape, multiple objectives, and numerous local minima. During this phase, mission parameters are often not yet fully…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-12 Jannik Graebner , Ryne Beeson

This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear mixture MDPs under the Bellman optimality condition. While guaranteeing computational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Woojin Chae , Dabeen Lee

We introduce a novel class of algorithms to efficiently approximate the unknown return distributions in policy evaluation problems from distributional reinforcement learning (DRL). The proposed distributional dynamic programming algorithms…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-22 Julian Gerstenberg , Ralph Neininger , Denis Spiegel

In the robotics literature, different knowledge transfer approaches have been proposed to leverage the experience from a source task or robot -- real or virtual -- to accelerate the learning process on a new task or robot. A commonly made…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-03-31 Michael J. Sorocky , Siqi Zhou , Angela P. Schoellig

In this paper, we explore lifting Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to the space of probability measures and consider the so-called measurized MDPs: deterministic processes where states are probability measures on the original state space,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-09 Daniel Adelman , Alba V. Olivares-Nadal

We introduce Threatened Markov Decision Processes (TMDPs) as an extension of the classical Markov Decision Process framework for Reinforcement Learning (RL). TMDPs allow suporting a decision maker against potential opponents in a RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-27 Victor Gallego , Roi Naveiro , David Rios Insua , David Gomez-Ullate Oteiza

The main goal of this paper is to investigate continuous-time distributed dynamic programming (DP) algorithms for networked multi-agent Markov decision problems (MAMDPs). In our study, we adopt a distributed multi-agent framework where…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-14 Donghwan Lee , Han-Dong Lim , Do Wan Kim

We study a Q learning algorithm for continuous time stochastic control problems. The proposed algorithm uses the sampled state process by discretizing the state and control action spaces under piece-wise constant control processes. We show…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-10 Erhan Bayraktar , Ali Devran Kara

Perturbation theory for Markov chains addresses the question how small differences in the transitions of Markov chains are reflected in differences between their distributions. We prove powerful and flexible bounds on the distance of the…

Computation · Statistics 2017-02-27 Daniel Rudolf , Nikolaus Schweizer

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

This paper studies the remote estimation of multiple Markov sources over a lossy and rate-constrained channel. Unlike most existing studies that treat all source states equally, we exploit the \emph{semantics of information} and consider…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-22 Jiping Luo , Nikolaos Pappas

The Importance Markov chain is a novel algorithm bridging the gap between rejection sampling and importance sampling, moving from one to the other through a tuning parameter. Based on a modified sample of an instrumental Markov chain…

Computation · Statistics 2024-02-27 Charly Andral , Randal Douc , Hugo Marival , Christian P. Robert

For decades, National Football League (NFL) coaches' observed fourth down decisions have been largely inconsistent with prescriptions based on statistical models. In this paper, we develop a framework to explain this discrepancy using an…

Applications · Statistics 2026-03-06 Nathan Sandholtz , Lucas Wu , Martin Puterman , Timothy C. Y. Chan

The linear Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework offers a principled foundation for reinforcement learning (RL) with strong theoretical guarantees and sample efficiency. However, its restrictive assumption-that both transition dynamics…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-03 Sinian Zhang , Kaicheng Zhang , Ziping Xu , Tianxi Cai , Doudou Zhou

We propose a diffusion approximation method to the continuous-state Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can be utilized to address autonomous navigation and control in unstructured off-road environments. In contrast to most…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-02-08 Junhong Xu , Kai Yin , Zheng Chen , Jason M. Gregory , Ethan A. Stump , Lantao Liu