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Related papers: Tighter Value-Function Approximations for POMDPs

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Recent benchmarks for memory-augmented reinforcement learning (RL) have introduced partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) environments in which agents must use historical observations to make decisions. However, these…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Yongyi Wang , Lingfeng Li , Bozhou Chen , Ang Li , Hanyu Liu , Qirui Zheng , Xionghui Yang , Wenxin Li

We propose a new approach to value-directed belief state approximation for POMDPs. The value-directed model allows one to choose approximation methods for belief state monitoring that have a small impact on decision quality. Using a vector…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-14 Pascal Poupart , Craig Boutilier

Uncertainty plays a central role in spoken dialogue systems. Some stochastic models like Markov decision process (MDP) are used to model the dialogue manager. But the partially observable system state and user intention hinder the natural…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-01-14 Bo Zhang , Qingsheng Cai , Jianfeng Mao , Baining Guo

We study strategy synthesis for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The particular problem is to determine strategies that provably adhere to (probabilistic) temporal logic constraints. This problem is computationally…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-03-22 Steven Carr , Nils Jansen , Ralf Wimmer , Alexandru C. Serban , Bernd Becker , Ufuk Topcu

This note provides upper bounds on the number of operations required to compute by value iterations a nearly optimal policy for an infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision process with a finite number of states and actions. For a given…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-29 Eugene A. Feinberg , Gaojin He

In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-07-10 Naci Saldi

Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) requires computing policies under imperfect state information. Despite recent advances, the scalability of existing POMDP solvers remains limited. Moreover, many settings…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-02 David Hudák , Maris F. L. Galesloot , Martin Tappler , Martin Kurečka , Nils Jansen , Milan Češka

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

In this paper, we propose a policy gradient method for confounded partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with continuous state and observation spaces in the offline setting. We first establish a novel identification result…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-04 Mao Hong , Zhengling Qi , Yanxun Xu

This paper aims to establish an entropy-regularized value-based reinforcement learning method that can ensure the monotonic improvement of policies at each policy update. Unlike previously proposed lower-bounds on policy improvement in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-26 Lingwei Zhu , Takamitsu Matsubara

We prove new upper and lower bounds for sample complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of an infinite-horizon average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) given access to a generative model. When the mixing time of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Yujia Jin , Aaron Sidford

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) offer a principled formalism for planning under state and transition uncertainty. Despite advances made towards solving large POMDPs, obtaining performant policies under limited…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Zakariya Laouar , Qi Heng Ho , Zachary Sunberg

We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) based on spectral decomposition methods. While spectral methods have been previously employed for consistent learning of (passive)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-20 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

Many medical decision-making tasks can be framed as partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs). However, prevailing two-stage approaches that first learn a POMDP and then solve it often fail because the model that best fits the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-04-01 Joseph Futoma , Michael C. Hughes , Finale Doshi-Velez

Algorithmic analysis of Markov decision processes (MDP) and stochastic games (SG) in practice relies on value-iteration (VI) algorithms. Since the basic version of VI does not provide guarantees on the precision of the result, variants of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Muqsit Azeem , Jan Kretinsky , Maximilian Weininger

This paper addresses a key limitation in existing counterfactual inference methods for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Current approaches assume a specific causal model to make counterfactuals identifiable. However, there are usually many…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Jessica Lally , Milad Kazemi , Nicola Paoletti

Algorithmic analysis of Markov decision processes (MDP) and stochastic games (SG) in practice relies on value-iteration (VI) algorithms. Since basic VI does not provide guarantees on the precision of the result, variants of VI have been…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Muqsit Azeem , Jan Kretinsky , Maximilian Weininger

This article presents the complexity of reachability decision problems for parametric Markov decision processes (pMDPs), an extension to Markov decision processes (MDPs) where transitions probabilities are described by polynomials over a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-09-29 Sebastian Junges , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Guillermo A. Pérez , Tobias Winkler

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a central model for uncertainty in sequential decision making. The most basic objective is the reachability objective, where a target set must be eventually visited, and the more…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , David Lurie , Raimundo Saona

This paper proposes Partially Observable Reference Policy Programming, a novel anytime online approximate POMDP solver which samples meaningful future histories very deeply while simultaneously forcing a gradual policy update. We provide…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-17 Edward Kim , Hanna Kurniawati