Related papers: Convergence of Proximal Policy Gradient Method for…
In this paper we consider distributed optimization problems in which the cost function is separable, i.e., a sum of possibly non-smooth functions all sharing a common variable, and can be split into a strongly convex term and a convex one.…
We consider a rate control problem for an $N$-particle weakly interacting finite state Markov process. The process models the state evolution of a large collection of particles and allows for multiple particles to change state…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and the other is a general convex function that admits a simple proximal mapping. We assume the whole…
This paper investigates a singular stochastic control problem for a multi-dimensional regime-switching diffusion process confined in an unbounded domain. The objective is to maximize the total expected discounted rewards from exerting the…
In this paper we investigate the convergence of the Policy Iteration Algorithm (PIA) for a class of general continuous-time entropy-regularized stochastic control problems. In particular, instead of employing sophisticated PDE estimates for…
The classical Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative method for solving stochastic control problems and is derived from Pontryagin's optimality principle. It is known that the MSA may fail to converge. Using careful…
Nonlinear control systems with partial information to the decision maker are prevalent in a variety of applications. As a step toward studying such nonlinear systems, this work explores reinforcement learning methods for finding the optimal…
We study an optimal control problem for the stochastic wave equation driven by affine multiplicative noise, formulated as a stochastic linear-quadratic (SLQ) problem. By applying a stochastic Pontryagin's maximum principle, we characterize…
We investigate a family of approximate multi-step proximal point methods, framed as implicit linear discretizations of gradient flow. The resulting methods are multi-step proximal point methods, with similar computational cost in each…
In this paper, an open problem is solved, for the stochastic optimal control problem with delay where the control domain is nonconvex and the diffusion term contains both control and its delayed term. Inspired by previous results by \O…
This paper develops a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) strategy for a class of discrete-time linear systems with consideration of globally coupled constraints. The DMPC under study is based on the dual problem concerning all…
We develop policy gradients methods for stochastic control with exit time in a model-free setting. We propose two types of algorithms for learning either directly the optimal policy or by learning alternately the value function (critic) and…
Convergence of stochastic processes with jumps to diffusion processes is investigated in the case when the limit process has discontinuous coefficients. An example is given in which the diffusion approximation of a queueing model yields a…
We characterize the optimal control for a class of singular stochastic control problems as the unique solution to a related Skorokhod reflection problem. The considered optimization problems concern the minimization of a discounted cost…
In this paper, we establish a general stochastic maximum principle for optimal control for systems described by a continuous-time Markov regime-switching stochastic recursive utilities model. The control domain is postulated not to be…
We consider a stochastic control problem where the set of strict (classical) controls is not necessarily convex, and the system is governed by a nonlinear backward stochastic differential equation. By introducing a new approach, we…
Optimality conditions in the form of a variational inequality are proved for a class of constrained optimal control problems of stochastic differential equations. The cost function and the inequality constraints are functions of the…
In this paper we address the convergence of stochastic approximation when the functions to be minimized are not convex and nonsmooth. We show that the "mean-limit" approach to the convergence which leads, for smooth problems, to the ODE…
The recently developed Distributed Block Proximal Method, for solving stochastic big-data convex optimization problems, is studied in this paper under the assumption of constant stepsizes and strongly convex (possibly non-smooth) local…
A stochastic gradient method for finite-sum minimization subject to deterministic linear constraints is proposed and analyzed. The procedure presented adapts the projected gradient method on convex set to the use of both a stochastic…