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Reinforcement Learning (RL) models have continually evolved to navigate the exploration - exploitation trade-off in uncertain Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In this study, I leverage the principles of stochastic thermodynamics and system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Peeyush Kumar

We consider multiple parallel Markov decision processes (MDPs) coupled by global constraints, where the time varying objective and constraint functions can only be observed after the decision is made. Special attention is given to how well…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-09-12 Xiaohan Wei , Hao Yu , Michael J. Neely

Representations are at the core of all deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods for both Markov decision processes (MDPs) and partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). Many representation learning methods and theoretical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-23 Tianwei Ni , Benjamin Eysenbach , Erfan Seyedsalehi , Michel Ma , Clement Gehring , Aditya Mahajan , Pierre-Luc Bacon

Algorithms developed under stationary Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) often face challenges in non-stationary environments, and infinite-horizon formulations may not directly apply to finite-horizon tasks. To address these limitations, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zhizuo Chen , Theodore T. Allen

Consider the problem of approximating the optimal policy of a Markov decision process (MDP) by sampling state transitions. In contrast to existing reinforcement learning methods that are based on successive approximations to the nonlinear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-10-18 Mengdi Wang

Non-stationary environments are challenging for reinforcement learning algorithms. If the state transition and/or reward functions change based on latent factors, the agent is effectively tasked with optimizing a behavior that maximizes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-21 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Bruno C. da Silva

We present two elegant solutions for modeling continuous-time dynamics, in a novel model-based reinforcement learning (RL) framework for semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs), using neural ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Our models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Jianzhun Du , Joseph Futoma , Finale Doshi-Velez

Recent research in decision theoretic planning has focussed on making the solution of Markov decision processes (MDPs) more feasible. We develop a family of algorithms for structured reachability analysis of MDPs that are suitable when an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-24 Craig Boutilier , Ronen I. Brafman , Christopher W. Geib

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-05-17 Tor Lattimore , Marcus Hutter

The abstraction of dynamical systems is a powerful tool that enables the design of feedback controllers using a correct-by-design framework. We investigate a novel scheme to obtain data-driven abstractions of discrete-time stochastic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-15 Rudi Coppola , Andrea Peruffo , Licio Romao , Alessandro Abate , Manuel Mazo

We study model-based learning of finite-window policies in tabular partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A common approach to learning under partial observability is to approximate unbounded history dependencies using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Philip Jordan , Maryam Kamgarpour

This paper addresses the problem of planning under uncertainty in large Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Factored MDPs represent a complex state space using state variables and the transition model using a dynamic Bayesian network. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-06-10 C. Guestrin , D. Koller , R. Parr , S. Venkataraman

Markov Decision Processes (Mdps) form a versatile framework used to model a wide range of optimization problems. The Mdp model consists of sets of states, actions, time steps, rewards, and probability transitions. When in a given state and…

The low rank MDP has emerged as an important model for studying representation learning and exploration in reinforcement learning. With a known representation, several model-free exploration strategies exist. In contrast, all algorithms for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Aditya Modi , Jinglin Chen , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Nan Jiang , Alekh Agarwal

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are stochastic optimization problems that model situations where a decision maker controls a system based on its state. Partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are generalizations of MDPs where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-26 Victor Cohen , Axel Parmentier

Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms such as Q-learning [Watkins, Dayan 92] have been widely used in practice and can achieve human level performance in applications such as video games [Mnih et al. 15]. Recently, equipped with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-03 Zhao Song , Wen Sun

This work studies a multi-agent Markov decision process (MDP) that can undergo agent dropout and the computation of policies for the post-dropout system based on control and sampling of the pre-dropout system. The central planner's…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-24 Carmel Fiscko , Soummya Kar , Bruno Sinopoli

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with unknown disturbance distribution and address this problem using the robust Markov decision process (RMDP) approach. We construct the empirical distribution of the unknown disturbance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-11 Sivaramakrishnan Ramani

We investigate model-based reinforcement learning in contextual Markov decision processes (C-MDPs) in which the context is unobserved and induces confounding in the offline dataset. In such settings, conventional model-learning methods are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Nishanth Venkatesh , Andreas A. Malikopoulos

Reinforcement learning (RL) on high-dimensional and complex problems relies on abstraction for improved efficiency and generalization. In this paper, we study abstraction in the continuous-control setting, and extend the definition of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Prakash Panangaden , Sahand Rezaei-Shoshtari , Rosie Zhao , David Meger , Doina Precup