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In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-08-24 Li Xia

In Stackelberg security games when information about the attacker's payoffs is uncertain, algorithms have been proposed to learn the optimal defender commitment by interacting with the attacker and observing their best responses. In this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-11-01 Jiarui Gan , Qingyu Guo , Long Tran-Thanh , Bo An , Michael Wooldridge

Suppose an agent is in a (possibly unknown) Markov Decision Process in the absence of a reward signal, what might we hope that an agent can efficiently learn to do? This work studies a broad class of objectives that are defined solely as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-29 Elad Hazan , Sham M. Kakade , Karan Singh , Abby Van Soest

We revisit the reduction of learning in adversarial Markov decision processes [MDPs] to adversarial learning based on $Q$--values; this reduction has been considered in a number of recent articles as one building block to perform policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Matthieu Jonckheere , Chiara Mignacco , Gilles Stoltz

Deep reinforcement learning models are vulnerable to adversarial attacks that can decrease a victim's cumulative expected reward by manipulating the victim's observations. Despite the efficiency of previous optimization-based methods for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-28 You Qiaoben , Chengyang Ying , Xinning Zhou , Hang Su , Jun Zhu , Bo Zhang

We study the problem of synthesizing a controller that maximizes the entropy of a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) subject to a constraint on the expected total reward. Such a controller minimizes the predictability of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-18 Yagiz Savas , Michael Hibbard , Bo Wu , Takashi Tanaka , Ufuk Topcu

This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-10 Erhan Bayraktar , Yu-Jui Huang , Zhenhua Wang , Zhou Zhou

We consider approximate dynamic programming for the infinite-horizon stationary $\gamma$-discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. While in the exact case it is known that there always exists an optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-04-23 Boris Lesner , Bruno Scherrer

Most reinforcement learning methods are based upon the key assumption that the transition dynamics and reward functions are fixed, that is, the underlying Markov decision process is stationary. However, in many real-world applications, this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-23 Yash Chandak , Georgios Theocharous , Shiv Shankar , Martha White , Sridhar Mahadevan , Philip S. Thomas

We study the problem of synthesizing a policy that maximizes the entropy of a Markov decision process (MDP) subject to a temporal logic constraint. Such a policy minimizes the predictability of the paths it generates, or dually, maximizes…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-17 Yagiz Savas , Melkior Ornik , Murat Cubuktepe , Mustafa O. Karabag , Ufuk Topcu

Policy optimization is a widely-used method in reinforcement learning. Due to its local-search nature, however, theoretical guarantees on global optimality often rely on extra assumptions on the Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that bypass…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-20 Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Chung-Wei Lee

We introduce synchronizing objectives for Markov decision processes (MDP). Intuitively, a synchronizing objective requires that eventually, at every step there is a state which concentrates almost all the probability mass. In particular, it…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2011-02-22 Laurent Doyen , Thierry Massart , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

This paper studies optimal market making for large-tick assets in the presence of latency. We consider a random walk model for the asset price, and formulate the market maker's optimization problem using Markov Decision Processes (MDP). We…

Trading and Market Microstructure · Quantitative Finance 2020-03-18 Xuefeng Gao , Yunhan Wang

Today's high-stakes adversarial interactions feature attackers who constantly breach the ever-improving security measures. Deception mitigates the defender's loss by misleading the attacker to make suboptimal decisions. In order to formally…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Zheyuan Ryan Shi , Ariel D. Procaccia , Kevin S. Chan , Sridhar Venkatesan , Noam Ben-Asher , Nandi O. Leslie , Charles Kamhoua , Fei Fang

In this work, we study the problem of actively classifying the attributes of dynamical systems characterized as a finite set of Markov decision process (MDP) models. We are interested in finding strategies that actively interact with the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-06 Bo Wu , Niklas Lauffer , Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Suda Bharadwaj , Zhe Xu , Ufuk Topcu

In adversarial patrolling games, a mobile Defender strives to discover intrusions at vulnerable targets initiated by an Attacker. The Attacker's utility is traditionally defined as the probability of completing an attack, possibly weighted…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-02-03 David Klaška , Antonín Kučera , Vít Musil , Vojtěch Řehák

Deploying autonomous driving systems requires robustness against long-tail scenarios that are rare but safety-critical. While adversarial training offers a promising solution, existing methods typically decouple scenario generation from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Tong Nie , Yihong Tang , Junlin He , Yuewen Mei , Jie Sun , Lijun Sun , Wei Ma , Jian Sun

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

A standard assumption in Reinforcement Learning is that the agent observes every visited state-action pair in the associated Markov Decision Process (MDP), along with the per-step rewards. Strong theoretical results are known in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Zhengjia Zhuo , Anupam Gupta , Viswanath Nagarajan

We study reward-free and reward-agnostic exploration in episodic finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs), where an agent explores an unknown environment without observing external rewards. Reward-free exploration aims to enable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Oran Ridel , Alon Cohen