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Contextual Markov decision processes (CMDPs) describe a class of reinforcement learning problems in which the transition kernels and reward functions can change over time with different MDPs indexed by a context variable. While CMDPs serve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Junze Deng , Yuan Cheng , Shaofeng Zou , Yingbin Liang

Many physical systems have underlying safety considerations that require that the policy employed ensures the satisfaction of a set of constraints. The analytical formulation usually takes the form of a Constrained Markov Decision Process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Aria HasanzadeZonuzy , Archana Bura , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai

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 this paper, building on the formulation of quantum Markov decision processes (q-MDPs) presented in our previous work [{\sc N.~Saldi, S.~Sanjari, and S.~Y\"{u}ksel}, {\em Quantum Markov Decision Processes: General Theory, Approximations,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-02-24 Naci Saldi , Sina Sanjari , Serdar Yuksel

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Maximilian Nägele , Jan Olle , Thomas Fösel , Remmy Zen , Florian Marquardt

We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

We study computational and statistical aspects of learning Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs). In this model, the learner interacts with an MDP drawn at the beginning of each epoch from an unknown mixture of MDPs. To sidestep known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Fan Chen , Constantinos Daskalakis , Noah Golowich , Alexander Rakhlin

Network Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), a popular model for multi-agent control, pose a significant challenge to efficient learning due to the exponential growth of the global state-action space with the number of agents. In this work,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Zhaolin Ren , Runyu Zhang , Bo Dai , Na Li

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are formal models commonly used in sequential decision-making. MDPs capture the stochasticity that may arise, for instance, from imprecise actuators via probabilities in the transition function. However, in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Marnix Suilen , Thiago D. Simão , David Parker , Nils Jansen

The objective is to study an on-line Hidden Markov model (HMM) estimation-based Q-learning algorithm for partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) on finite state and action sets. When the full state observation is available,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-25 Hyung-Jin Yoon , Donghwan Lee , Naira Hovakimyan

We study the problem of estimating the optimal Q-function of $\gamma$-discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the synchronous setting, where independent samples for all state-action pairs are drawn from a generative model at each…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-27 Mohammad Boveiri , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani

We develop a qualitative theory of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and Partially Observable MDPs that can be used to model sequential decision making tasks when only qualitative information is available. Our approach is based upon an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-07 Blai Bonet , Judea Pearl

Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) focuses on designing policies that achieve good performance under model uncertainties. The goal is to maximize the worst-case long-term discounted reward, where the data for RL comes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Saptarshi Mandal , Yashaswini Murthy , R. Srikant

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimization and learning for constrained and multi-objective Markov decision processes, for both discounted rewards and expected average rewards. We formulate the problems as zero-sum games where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-05 Ather Gattami , Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Agarwal

We study the tradeoff between consistency and robustness in the context of a single-trajectory time-varying Markov Decision Process (MDP) with untrusted machine-learned advice. Our work departs from the typical approach of treating advice…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Tongxin Li , Yiheng Lin , Shaolei Ren , Adam Wierman

To bridge the gap between empirical success and theoretical understanding in transfer reinforcement learning (RL), we study a principled approach with provable performance guarantees. We introduce a novel composite MDP framework where…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-04 Jinhang Chai , Elynn Chen , Lin Yang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has gained substantial attention across diverse application domains and theoretical investigations. Existing literature on RL theory largely focuses on risk-neutral settings where the decision-maker learns to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Zhengqi Wu , Renyuan Xu

Many applications -- including power systems, robotics, and economics -- involve a dynamical system interacting with a stochastic and hard-to-model environment. We adopt a reinforcement learning approach to control such systems.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-26 Abed AlRahman Al Makdah , Oliver Kosut , Lalitha Sankar , Shaofeng Zou