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Related papers: Tighter Value-Function Approximations for POMDPs

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Interpretability of reinforcement learning policies is essential for many real-world tasks but learning such interpretable policies is a hard problem. Particularly rule-based policies such as decision trees and rules lists are difficult to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Daniël Vos , Sicco Verwer

We consider deterministic Markov decision processes (MDPs) and apply max-plus algebra tools to approximate the value iteration algorithm by a smaller-dimensional iteration based on a representation on dictionaries of value functions. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-21 Francis Bach

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide a modeling framework for autonomous decision making under uncertainty and imperfect sensing, e.g. robot manipulation and self-driving cars. However, optimal control of POMDPs…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Rangoli Sharan , Joel W. Burdick

We study the policy testing problem in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the fixed-confidence setting under a generative model with static sampling. The goal is to decide whether the value of a given policy exceeds a specified…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-21 Kaito Ariu , Po-An Wang , Alexandre Proutiere , Kenshi Abe

We consider the problem of finding the best memoryless stochastic policy for an infinite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) with finite state and action spaces with respect to either the discounted or mean reward…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-02 Johannes Müller , Guido Montúfar

The olfactory search POMDP (partially observable Markov decision process) is a sequential decision-making problem designed to mimic the task faced by insects searching for a source of odor in turbulence, and its solutions have applications…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Aurore Loisy , Robin A. Heinonen

POMDPs capture a broad class of decision making problems, but hardness results suggest that learning is intractable even in simple settings due to the inherent partial observability. However, in many realistic problems, more information is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Jonathan N. Lee , Alekh Agarwal , Christoph Dann , Tong Zhang

Partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with discounted-sum payoff are a standard framework to model a wide range of problems related to decision making under uncertainty. Traditionally, the goal has been to obtain policies…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-05-01 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Adrián Elgyütt , Petr Novotný , Owen Rouillé

A common challenge in real-time operations is deciding whether to re-solve an optimization problem or continue using an existing solution. While modern data platforms may collect information at high frequencies, many real-time operations…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Rui Ai , Hugo De Oliveira Barbalho , Sirui Li , Alexei Robsky , David Simchi-Levi , Ishai Menache

The formal verification and controller synthesis for Markov decision processes that evolve over uncountable state spaces are computationally hard and thus generally rely on the use of approximations. In this work, we consider the…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-11-28 Sofie Haesaert , Sadegh Soudjani , Alessandro Abate

We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Navdeep Kumar , Yashaswini Murthy , Itai Shufaro , Kfir Y. Levy , R. Srikant , Shie Mannor

This article presents a type-based analysis for deriving upper bounds on the expected execution cost of probabilistic programs. The analysis is naturally compositional, parametric in the cost model, and supports higher order functions and…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2020-09-23 Di Wang , David M Kahn , Jan Hoffmann

Managing announced task completion times is a fundamental control problem in project management. While extensive research exists on estimating task durations and task scheduling, the problem of when and how to update completion times…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Duncan Eddy , Esen Yel , Emma Passmore , Niles Egan , Grayson Armour , Dylan M. Asmar , Mykel J. Kochenderfer

Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-06 Vincent Corlay , Jean-Christophe Sibel

Noisy sensing, imperfect control, and environment changes are defining characteristics of many real-world robot tasks. The partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) provides a principled mathematical framework for modeling and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-09-22 Mikko Lauri , David Hsu , Joni Pajarinen

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), that are a standard framework for robotics applications to model uncertainties present in the real world, with temporal logic specifications. All temporal logic…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-02-19 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Raghav Gupta , Ayush Kanodia

We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with parameter uncertainty, under the robust MDP paradigm. Previous studies showed that robust MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handle uncertainty, can be solved using dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-06-27 Aviv Tamar , Huan Xu , Shie Mannor

Safety in stochastic control systems, which are subject to random noise with a known probability distribution, aims to compute policies that satisfy predefined operational constraints with high confidence throughout the uncertain evolution…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-12 Saber Omidi , Marek Petrik , Se Young Yoon , Momotaz Begum

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

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) remain a core challenge in reinforcement learning due to incomplete state information. We address this by reformulating POMDPs as fully observable processes with fixed-length…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Wuhao Wang , Zhiyong Chen