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We study off-policy evaluation and learning from sequential data in a structured class of Markov decision processes that arise from repeated interactions with an exogenous sequence of arrivals with contexts, which generate unknown…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-20 Nathan Kallus , Angela Zhou

In this work, we study dynamic programming (DP) algorithms for partially observable Markov decision processes with jointly continuous and discrete state-spaces. We consider a class of stochastic systems which have coupled discrete and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-07 Donghwan Lee , Niao He , Jianghai Hu

This paper presents a state representation framework for Markov decision processes (MDPs) that can be learned solely from state trajectories, requiring neither reward signals nor the actions executed by the agent. We propose learning the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Lorenzo Steccanella , Joshua B. Evans , Özgür Şimşek , Anders Jonsson

We study data-driven learning of robust stochastic control for infinite-horizon systems with potentially continuous state and action spaces. In many managerial settings--supply chains, finance, manufacturing, services, and dynamic…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-18 Shengbo Wang , Jason Meng , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

We are interested in enabling autonomous agents to learn and reason about systems with hidden states, such as locking mechanisms. We cast this problem as learning the parameters of a discrete Partially Observable Markov Decision Process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Seiji Shaw , Travis Manderson , Chad Kessens , Nicholas Roy

Reinforcement learning (RL) is empirically successful in complex nonlinear Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous state spaces. By contrast, the majority of theoretical RL literature requires the MDP to satisfy some form of linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-16 Dhruv Malik , Aldo Pacchiano , Vishwak Srinivasan , Yuanzhi Li

We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays there for a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

We consider problems in sequential decision making with natural multi-level structure, where sub-tasks are assembled together to accomplish complex goals. Systematically inferring and leveraging hierarchical structure has remained a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-11 Sichen Yang , Mauro Maggioni

In this paper, we propose a compositional approach for the construction of finite abstractions (a.k.a. finite Markov decision processes (MDPs)) for networks of discrete-time stochastic control subsystems that are not necessarily…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-02-12 Abolfazl Lavaei , Sadegh Soudjani , Majid Zamani

We present a framework to address a class of sequential decision making problems. Our framework features learning the optimal control policy with robustness to noisy data, determining the unknown state and action parameters, and performing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-20 Amber Srivastava , Srinivasa M Salapaka

We study episodic reinforcement learning in non-stationary linear (a.k.a. low-rank) Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), i.e, both the reward and transition kernel are linear with respect to a given feature map and are allowed to evolve either…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Ahmed Touati , Pascal Vincent

A Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a popular model for reinforcement learning. However, its commonly used assumption of stationary dynamics and rewards is too stringent and fails to hold in adversarial, nonstationary, or multi-agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-22 Tiancheng Yu , Suvrit Sra

General-purpose agents require fine-grained controls and rich sensory inputs to perform a wide range of tasks. However, this complexity often leads to intractable decision-making. Traditionally, agents are provided with task-specific action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Rafael Rodriguez-Sanchez , George Konidaris

This paper introduces a novel abstraction-based framework for controller synthesis of nonlinear discrete-time stochastic systems. The focus is on probabilistic reach-avoid specifications. The framework is based on abstracting a stochastic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-10 Frederik Baymler Mathiesen , Sofie Haesaert , Luca Laurenti

Offline estimation of the dynamical model of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a non-trivial task that greatly depends on the data available in the learning phase. Sometimes the dynamics of the model is invariant with respect to some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-13 Giorgio Angelotti , Nicolas Drougard , Caroline P. C. Chanel

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are mathematical models of sequential decision-making under uncertainty that have found applications in healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and others. In these models, a decision-maker observes the state…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-22 Madeleine Pollack , Lauren N. Steimle

A common setting of reinforcement learning (RL) is a Markov decision process (MDP) in which the environment is a stochastic discrete-time dynamical system. Whereas MDPs are suitable in such applications as video-games or puzzles, physical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Pavel Osinenko , Dmitrii Dobriborsci , Grigory Yaremenko , Georgiy Malaniya

We consider episodic reinforcement learning in reward-mixing Markov decision processes (RMMDPs): at the beginning of every episode nature randomly picks a latent reward model among $M$ candidates and an agent interacts with the MDP…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-07 Jeongyeol Kwon , Yonathan Efroni , Constantine Caramanis , Shie Mannor

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a canonical model to reason about decision making within a stochastic environment. We study a fundamental class of infinite MDPs: one-counter MDPs (OC-MDPs). They extend finite MDPs via an associated…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Michal Ajdarów , James C. A. Main , Petr Novotný , Mickael Randour

We present a method for a certain class of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can relate the optimal policy back to one or more reward sources in the environment. For a given initial state, without fully computing the value function,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Josh Bertram , Peng Wei