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Related papers: Planning and Learning in Average Risk-aware MDPs

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Risk-averse decision-making under uncertainty in partially observable domains is a central challenge in artificial intelligence and is essential for developing reliable autonomous agents. The formal framework for such problems is the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-27 Yaacov Pariente , Vadim Indelman

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Long-run average rewards provide a mathematically elegant formalism for expressing long term performance. Value iteration (VI)…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-09-01 Pranav Ashok , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Przemyslaw Daca , Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer

This paper develops risk-averse models to support system operators in planning and operating the electricity grid under uncertainty from renewable power generation. We incorporate financial risk hedging using conditional value at risk…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-06 Arash Khojaste , Jonathan Pearce , Daniela Pucci de Farias , Geoffrey Pritchard , Golbon Zakeri

For a risk-averse finite-horizon Markov Decision Problem, we introduce a special class of Markov coherent risk measures, called mini-batch measures. We also define the class of multipattern risk-averse problems that generalizes the class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Andrzej Ruszczynski , Tiangang Zhang

We develop an approach for solving time-consistent risk-sensitive stochastic optimization problems using model-free reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, we assume agents assess the risk of a sequence of random variables using dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-01 Anthony Coache , Sebastian Jaimungal

We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with an unknown cost function and employ stochastic convex optimization tools to address the problem of imitation learning, which consists of learning a policy from a finite set of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Angeliki Kamoutsi , Goran Banjac , John Lygeros

In an episodic Markov Decision Process (MDP) problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of actions in a sequence of $H$ trials, where $H$ is the episode length, in order to maximize the total payoff of the chosen actions. Q-learning,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Xu Zhu

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular learning paradigm due to its potential sample efficiency compared to model-free RL. However, existing empirical model-based RL approaches lack the ability to explore. This work studies a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Yuda Song , Wen Sun

Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is widely used to specify high-level objectives for system policies, and it is highly desirable for autonomous systems to learn the optimal policy with respect to such specifications. However, learning the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-26 Daqian Shao , Marta Kwiatkowska

Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) extend standard Markov decision processes (MDPs) to account for uncertainty in the transition probabilities. RMDPs have an uncertainty set that defines a set of possible transition functions, each of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Marnix Suilen , Guillermo A. Pérez

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) allow to compute reliable solutions for dynamic decision problems whose evolution is modeled by rewards and partially-known transition probabilities. Unfortunately, accounting for uncertainty in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Chin Pang Ho , Marek Petrik , Wolfram Wiesemann

We study risk-sensitive Reinforcement Learning (RL), where we aim to maximize the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) with a fixed risk tolerance $\tau$. Prior theoretical work studying risk-sensitive RL focuses on the tabular Markov Decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-21 Yulai Zhao , Wenhao Zhan , Xiaoyan Hu , Ho-fung Leung , Farzan Farnia , Wen Sun , Jason D. Lee

A crucial problem in reinforcement learning is learning the optimal policy. We study this in tabular infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes under the online setting. The existing algorithms either fail to achieve regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Xiang Ji , Gen Li

Initial DR studies mainly adopt model predictive control and thus require accurate models of the control problem (e.g., a customer behavior model), which are to a large extent uncertain for the EV scenario. Hence, model-free approaches,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-30 Nasrin Sadeghianpourhamami , Johannes Deleu , Chris Develder

We consider the off-policy evaluation problem of reinforcement learning using deep convolutional neural networks. We analyze the deep fitted Q-evaluation method for estimating the expected cumulative reward of a target policy, when the data…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-05 Xiang Ji , Minshuo Chen , Mengdi Wang , Tuo Zhao

Mainstream approximate action-value iteration reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms suffer from overestimation bias, leading to suboptimal policies in high-variance stochastic environments. Quantile-based action-value iteration methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Clinton Enwerem , Aniruddh G. Puranic , John S. Baras , Calin Belta

Our goal is to extract useful knowledge from demonstrations of behavior in sequential decision-making problems. Although it is well-known that humans commonly engage in risk-sensitive behaviors in the presence of stochasticity, most Inverse…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-21 Filippo Lazzati , Alberto Maria Metelli

We present the first finite-sample analysis of policy evaluation in robust average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Prior work in this setting have established only asymptotic convergence guarantees, leaving open the question of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-11 Yang Xu , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

We consider a control problem for a finite-state Markov system whose performance is evaluated by a coherent Markov risk measure. For each policy, the risk of a state is approximated by a function of its features, thus leading to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-05 Andrzej Ruszczynski , Shangzhe Yang

General-purpose, intelligent, learning agents cycle through sequences of observations, actions, and rewards that are complex, uncertain, unknown, and non-Markovian. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2009-12-30 Marcus Hutter