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Action delays degrade the performance of reinforcement learning in many real-world systems. This paper proposes a formal definition of delay-aware Markov Decision Process and proves it can be transformed into standard MDP with augmented…
A fundamental assumption of reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is that the relevant decision process is, in fact, Markov. However, when MDPs have rich observations, agents typically learn by way of an abstract state…
In this paper we consider the basic version of Reinforcement Learning (RL) that involves computing optimal data driven (adaptive) policies for Markovian decision process with unknown transition probabilities. We provide a brief survey of…
Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) aims to maximize the expected total reward, while the risk of uncertain outcomes needs to be controlled to ensure reliable performance in a risk-averse setting. In this paper, we consider the problem…
Although in recent years reinforcement learning has become very popular the number of successful applications to different kinds of operations research problems is rather scarce. Reinforcement learning is based on the well-studied dynamic…
Humans achieve efficient learning by relying on prior knowledge about the structure of naturally occurring tasks. There is considerable interest in designing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with similar properties. This includes…
Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have renewed interest in reward design for shaping agent behavior, but manually crafting reward functions is tedious and error-prone. A principled alternative is to specify behavioral…
We study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for episodic Markov decision processes (MDP) whose transition probability is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of state and action. Despite much recent progress in…
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…
One key challenge for multi-task Reinforcement learning (RL) in practice is the absence of task indicators. Robust RL has been applied to deal with task ambiguity, but may result in over-conservative policies. To balance the worst-case…
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…
To date, distributional reinforcement learning (distributional RL) methods have exclusively focused on the discounted setting, where an agent aims to optimize a discounted sum of rewards over time. In this work, we extend distributional RL…
Conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) is a prominent risk measure in financial engineering, energy systems, and supply chain management. In these domains, Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a long-run CVaR criterion effectively mitigate cost…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), the mathematical framework underlying most algorithms in Reinforcement Learning (RL), are often used in a way that wrongfully assumes that the state of an agent's environment does not change during action…
In several reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios, mainly in security settings, there may be adversaries trying to interfere with the reward generating process. In this paper, we introduce Threatened Markov Decision Processes (TMDPs), which…
Recently, we have struck the balance between the information freshness, in terms of age of information (AoI), experienced by users and energy consumed by sensors, by appropriately activating sensors to update their current status in caching…
In dynamic programming (DP) and reinforcement learning (RL), an agent learns to act optimally in terms of expected long-term return by sequentially interacting with its environment modeled by a Markov decision process (MDP). More generally…
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…
We consider a new form of reinforcement learning (RL) that is based on opportunities to directly learn the optimal control policy and a general Markov decision process (MDP) framework devised to support these opportunities. Derivations of…
This paper targets the efficient construction of a safety shield for decision making in scenarios that incorporate uncertainty. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are prominent models to capture such planning problems. Reinforcement learning…