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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 consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-09 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Xi Chen , Alan Malek

We provide a new algorithm for solving Risk Sensitive Partially Observable Markov Decisions Processes, when the risk is modeled by a utility function, and both the state space and the space of observations is finite. This algorithm is based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-19 Arsham Afsardeir , Andreas Kapetanis , Vaios Laschos , Klaus Obermayer

We study risk-aware linear policy approximations for the optimal operation of an energy system with stochastic wind power, storage, and limited fuel. The resulting problem is a sequential decision-making problem with rolling forecasts. In…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-19 Thomas Mortimer , Robert Mieth

The parameters for a Markov Decision Process (MDP) often cannot be specified exactly. Uncertain MDPs (UMDPs) capture this model ambiguity by defining sets which the parameters belong to. Minimax regret has been proposed as an objective for…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-02-14 Marc Rigter , Bruno Lacerda , Nick Hawes

We present a scheme for sequential decision making with a risk-sensitive objective and constraints in a dynamic environment. A neural network is trained as an approximator of the mapping from parameter space to space of risk and policy with…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-07-10 Shuai Ma , Jia Yuan Yu , Ahmet Satir

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and positive integer costs associated with every transition. The traditional optimization objective (stochastic shortest path) asks to minimize…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-05-12 Tomáš Brázdil , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Anchit Gupta , Petr Novotný

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

The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-10-10 Zhi Chen , Pengqian Yu , William B. Haskell

In the context of first-order algorithms subject to random gradient noise, we study the trade-offs between the convergence rate (which quantifies how fast the initial conditions are forgotten) and the "risk" of suboptimality, i.e.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-11 Bugra Can , Mert Gürbüzbalaban

Optimal policies in Markov decision processes (MDPs) are very sensitive to model misspecification. This raises serious concerns about deploying them in high-stake domains. Robust MDPs (RMDP) provide a promising framework to mitigate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-06 Reazul Hasan Russel , Bahram Behzadian , Marek Petrik

Partial observability and uncertainty are common problems in sequential decision-making that particularly impede the use of formal models such as Markov decision processes (MDPs). However, in practice, agents may be able to employ costly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Merlijn Krale , Thiago D. Simão , Jana Tumova , Nils Jansen

We propose a novel framework for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RSRL) that incorporates robustness against transition uncertainty. We define two distinct yet coupled risk measures: an inner risk measure addressing state and cost…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-01-01 Shanyu Han , Yangbo He , Yang Liu

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

This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-18 Fei Wu , Erik Demeulemeester , Jannik Matuschke

We study the evaluation of a policy under best- and worst-case perturbations to a Markov decision process (MDP), using transition observations from the original MDP, whether they are generated under the same or a different policy. This is…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Andrew Bennett , Nathan Kallus , Miruna Oprescu , Wen Sun , Kaiwen Wang

In this paper, we consider a discrete-time Markov Decision Process (MDP) on a finite state-action space with a long-run risk-sensitive criterion used as the objective function. We discuss the concept of Blackwell optimality and comment on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-21 Marcin Pitera , Łukasz Stettner

We study best-policy identification for finite-horizon risk-sensitive reinforcement learning under the entropic risk measure. Recent work established a constant gap in the exponential horizon dependence between lower and upper bounds on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Amer Essakine , Claire Vernade

We consider controller synthesis for stochastic and partially unknown environments in which safety is essential. Specifically, we abstract the problem as a Markov decision process in which the expected performance is measured using a cost…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2015-10-21 Sebastian Junges , Nils Jansen , Christian Dehnert , Ufuk Topcu , Joost-Pieter Katoen

Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have received significant research interest, offering an alternative to standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that often assume fixed transition probabilities. RMDPs address this by optimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Xinyi Ni , Lifeng Lai