Related papers: The Value Problem for Multiple-Environment MDPs wi…
A tenet of reinforcement learning is that the agent always observes rewards. However, this is not true in many realistic settings, e.g., a human observer may not always be available to provide rewards, sensors may be limited or…
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with $\omega$-regular specifications given as parity objectives. We consider the problem of computing the set of almost-sure winning vertices from where the objective can be ensured with…
This paper studies the risk-averse mean-variance optimization in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs). The involved variance metric concerns reward variability during the whole process, and future deviations are…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…
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…
In the Markov decision process model, policies are usually evaluated by expected cumulative rewards. As this decision criterion is not always suitable, we propose in this paper an algorithm for computing a policy optimal for the quantile…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…
Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…
We build on a recently introduced geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to analyze classical MDP-solving algorithms: Value Iteration (VI) and Policy Iteration (PI). First, we develop a geometry-based analytical…
Recently discovered polyhedral structures of the value function for finite state-action discounted Markov decision processes (MDP) shed light on understanding the success of reinforcement learning. We investigate the value function polytope…
Interval Markov Decision Processes (IMDPs) are finite-state uncertain Markov models, where the transition probabilities belong to intervals. Recently, there has been a surge of research on employing IMDPs as abstractions of stochastic…
A standard model that arises in several applications in sequential decision making is partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) where a decision-making agent interacts with an uncertain environment. A basic objective in such…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model for decision making under uncertainty. They exhibit non-deterministic choice as well as probabilistic uncertainty. Traditionally, verification algorithms assume exact knowledge of the…
We study the minimization of a spectral risk measure of the total discounted cost generated by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) over a finite or infinite planning horizon. The MDP is assumed to have Borel state and action spaces and the cost…
It is well known that for any finite state Markov decision process (MDP) there is a memoryless deterministic policy that maximizes the expected reward. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), optimal memoryless policies…
In this paper, we provide a novel algorithm for solving planning and learning problems of Markov decision processes. The proposed algorithm follows a policy iteration-type update by using a rank-one approximation of the transition…
We introduce the notion of quantum Markov decision process (qMDP) as a semantic model of nondeterministic and concurrent quantum programs. It is shown by examples that qMDPs can be used in analysis of quantum algorithms and protocols. We…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) and simple stochastic games (SSGs) provide a rich mathematical framework to study many important problems related to probabilistic systems. MDPs and SSGs with finite-horizon objectives, where the goal is to…
We consider distribution-based objectives for Markov Decision Processes (MDP). This class of objectives gives rise to an interesting trade-off between full and partial information. As in full observation, the strategy in the MDP can depend…
Many sequential decision problems can be formulated as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) where the optimal value function (or cost-to-go function) can be shown to satisfy a monotone structure in some or all of its dimensions. When the state…