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In this paper, we show how a simulated Markov decision process (MDP) built by the so-called \emph{baseline} policies, can be used to compute a different policy, namely the \emph{simulated optimal} policy, for which the performance of this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-10-13 Yinlam Chow , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

This note re-visits the rolling-horizon control approach to the problem of a Markov decision process (MDP) with infinite-horizon discounted expected reward criterion. Distinguished from the classical value-iteration approach, we develop an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Hyeong Soo Chang

Optimal decision-making presents a significant challenge for autonomous systems operating in uncertain, stochastic and time-varying environments. Environmental variability over time can significantly impact the system's optimal decision…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Gokul Puthumanaillam , Xiangyu Liu , Negar Mehr , Melkior Ornik

Mixed observable Markov decision processes (MOMDPs) are a modeling framework for autonomous systems described by both fully and partially observable states. In this work, we study the problem of synthesizing a control policy for MOMDPs that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-03 Ugo Rosolia , Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Richard M. Murray , Aaron D. Ames

Structural results impose sufficient conditions on the model parameters of a Markov decision process (MDP) so that the optimal policy is an increasing function of the underlying state. The classical assumptions for MDP structural results…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-03-07 Vikram Krishnamurthy

In many practical sequential decision-making problems, tracking the state of the environment incurs a sensing/communication/computation cost. In these settings, the agent's interaction with its environment includes the additional component…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Vansh Kapoor , Jayakrishnan Nair

We present a unified framework based on primal-dual stochastic mirror descent for approximately solving infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) given a generative model. When applied to an average-reward MDP with $A_{tot}$ total…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-31 Yujia Jin , Aaron Sidford

The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Yash Chandak , Georgios Theocharous , Blossom Metevier , Philip S. Thomas

We study the automated abstraction-based synthesis of correct-by-construction control policies for stochastic dynamical systems with unknown dynamics. Our approach is to learn an abstraction from sampled data, which is represented in the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-03 Mahdi Nazeri , Thom Badings , Anne-Kathrin Schmuck , Sadegh Soudjani , Alessandro Abate

In this paper, we consider an integrated MSP-MDP framework which captures features of Markov decision process (MDP) and multistage stochastic programming (MSP). The integrated framework allows one to study a dynamic decision-making process…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-29 Zhiyao Yang , Zhiping Chen , Huifu Xu

The polling system with switch-over durations is a useful model with several practical applications. It is classified as a Discrete Event Dynamic System (DEDS) for which no one agreed upon modelling approach exists. Furthermore, DEDS are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-12-14 Dylan Solms

We study the $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-PAC policy identification problem in finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes. Existing approaches provide finite-time guarantees for approximate settings ($\varepsilon>0$) but suffer from high…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Cyrille Kone , Kevin Jamieson

This work proposes a compositional data-driven technique for the construction of finite Markov decision processes (MDPs) for large-scale stochastic networks with unknown mathematical models. Our proposed framework leverages dissipativity…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-09-18 Abolfazl Lavaei

Reinforcement learning in non-stationary environments is challenging due to abrupt and unpredictable changes in dynamics, often causing traditional algorithms to fail to converge. However, in many real-world cases, non-stationarity has some…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Mohsen Amiri , Sindri Magnússon

Automated synthesis of correct-by-construction controllers for autonomous systems is crucial for their deployment in safety-critical scenarios. Such autonomous systems are naturally modeled as stochastic dynamical models. The general…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-11-17 Thom Badings , Nils Jansen , Licio Romao , Alessandro Abate

In many engineering systems, proper predictive maintenance and operational control are essential to increase efficiency and reliability while reducing maintenance costs. However, one of the major challenges is that many sensors are used for…

Applications · Statistics 2025-12-09 Boyang Xu , Yunyi Kang , Xinyu Zhao , Hao Yan , Feng Ju

This paper presents with justifications a technique that is useful for the study of piecewise deterministic Markov decision processes (PDMDPs) with general policies and unbounded transition intensities. This technique produces an auxiliary…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-15 Xin Guo , Yi Zhang

In many real-world problems, there is the possibility to configure, to a limited extent, some environmental parameters to improve the performance of a learning agent. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, Configurable Markov Decision…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-06-15 Alberto Maria Metelli , Mirco Mutti , Marcello Restelli

One efficient approach to control chip-wide thermal distribution in multi-core systems is the optimization of online assignments of tasks to processing cores. Online task assignment, however, faces several uncertainties in real-world…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2020-09-08 Farnaz Niknia , Kiamehr Rezaee , Vesal Hakami

Markov state models (MSMs) are valuable for studying dynamics of protein conformational changes via statistical analysis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In MSMs, the complex configuration space is coarse-grained into conformational…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-06-11 Dedi Wang , Yunrui Qiu , Eric Beyerle , Xuhui Huang , Pratyush Tiwary