Related papers: Near-Optimal Policy Identification in Robust Const…
We study a primal-dual (PD) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for online constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). Despite its widespread practical use, the existing theoretical literature on PD-RL algorithms for this problem only…
We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…
It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…
In this paper, we consider reinforcement learning of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) with peak constraints, where an agent chooses a policy to optimize an objective and at the same time satisfy additional constraints. The agent has to take…
We study the problem of zero-delay coding for the transmission of a Markov source over a noisy channel with feedback and present a reinforcement learning solution which is guaranteed to achieve near-optimality. To this end, we formulate the…
Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide an efficient way to model real-world sequential decision making processes. Motivated by the problem of maintenance and inspection of a group of infrastructure components with…
We address the problem of computing reliable policies in reinforcement learning problems with limited data. In particular, we compute policies that achieve good returns with high confidence when deployed. This objective, known as the…
We investigate the classical active pure exploration problem in Markov Decision Processes, where the agent sequentially selects actions and, from the resulting system trajectory, aims at identifying the best policy as fast as possible. We…
One often encounters the curse of dimensionality in the application of dynamic programming to determine optimal policies for controlled Markov chains. In this paper, we provide a method to construct sub-optimal policies along with a bound…
In many real-world decision problems there is partially observed, hidden or latent information that remains fixed throughout an interaction. Such decision problems can be modeled as Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs), where a latent…
Standard value function approaches to finding policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are generally considered to be intractable for large models. The intractability of these algorithms is to a large extent a…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used in modeling decision making problems in stochastic environments. However, precise specification of the reward functions in MDPs is often very difficult. Recent approaches have focused on…
We study the sequential decision making problem of maximizing the expected total reward while satisfying a constraint on the expected total utility. We employ the natural policy gradient method to solve the discounted infinite-horizon…
In this paper we consider the problem of computing an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) provided we can only access its transition function through a generative sampling model that given any…
We study the minimization of a spectral risk measure of the total discounted cost generated by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) over a finite or infinite planning horizon. The MDP is assumed to have Borel state and action spaces and the cost…
We study the problem of synthesizing a policy that maximizes the entropy of a Markov decision process (MDP) subject to a temporal logic constraint. Such a policy minimizes the predictability of the paths it generates, or dually, maximizes…
Our goal is to compute a policy that guarantees improved return over a baseline policy even when the available MDP model is inaccurate. The inaccurate model may be constructed, for example, by system identification techniques when the true…
Regularized MDPs serve as a smooth version of original MDPs. However, biased optimal policy always exists for regularized MDPs. Instead of making the coefficient{\lambda}of regularized term sufficiently small, we propose an adaptive…
In many operations management problems, we need to make decisions sequentially to minimize the cost while satisfying certain constraints. One modeling approach to study such problems is constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). When…
This article presents a constrained policy optimization approach for the optimal control of systems under nonstationary uncertainties. We introduce an assumption that we call Markov embeddability that allows us to cast the stochastic…