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We present a new geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a natural normalization procedure that allows us to adjust the value function at each state without altering the advantage of any action with respect to any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Arsenii Mustafin , Aleksei Pakharev , Alex Olshevsky , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis

Several hierarchical reinforcement learning methods leverage planning to create a graph or sequences of intermediate goals, guiding a lower-level goal-conditioned (GC) policy to reach some final goals. The low-level policy is typically…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-31 Olivier Serris , Stéphane Doncieux , Olivier Sigaud

We consider a robust approach to address uncertainty in model parameters in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), which are widely used to model dynamic optimization in many applications. Most prior works consider the case where the uncertainty…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-02 Vineet Goyal , Julien Grand-Clément

Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) formalize sequential decision-making problems whose objective is to minimize a cost function while satisfying constraints on various cost functions. In this paper, we consider the setting of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-25 Krishna C. Kalagarla , Rahul Jain , Pierluigi Nuzzo

Although average gain optimality is a commonly adopted performance measure in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), it is often too asymptotic. Further incorporating measures of immediate losses leads to the hierarchy of bias optimalities, all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Victor Boone , Adrienne Tuynman

This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-11 Li Xia

We consider discounted infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward while satisfying expected cumulative constraints. Motivated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Tingting Ni , Maryam Kamgarpour

Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a standard model for agents making decisions in uncertain environments. Most work on POMDPs focuses on synthesizing strategies based on the available capabilities. However, system…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-07-12 Alyzia-Maria Konsta , Alberto Lluch Lafuente , Christoph Matheja

This paper studies Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with atomless initial state distributions and atomless transition probabilities. Such MDPs are called atomless. The initial state distribution is considered to be fixed. We show that for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-10-26 Eugene A. Feinberg , Aleksey B. Piunovskiy

In this paper, we explore lifting Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to the space of probability measures and consider the so-called measurized MDPs: deterministic processes where states are probability measures on the original state space,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-09 Daniel Adelman , Alba V. Olivares-Nadal

Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) remains a central challenge in sequential decision-making, especially when dealing with large state spaces and long-term optimization criteria. A key step in Bellman dynamic programming algorithms is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-04 Youssef Ait El Mahjoub , Jean-Michel Fourneau , Salma Alouah

We consider the problem of constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) where an agent interacts with a unichain Markov Decision Process. At every interaction, the agent obtains a reward. Further, there are $K$ cost functions. The agent aims…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Mridul Agarwal , Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal

Ye showed recently that the simplex method with Dantzig pivoting rule, as well as Howard's policy iteration algorithm, solve discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs), with a constant discount factor, in strongly polynomial time. More…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2010-08-04 Thomas Dueholm Hansen , Peter Bro Miltersen , Uri Zwick

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-07-29 Joseph Y. Halpern , Nan Rong , Ashutosh Saxena

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used for modeling decision-making problems in robotics, automated control, and economics. Traditional MDPs assume that the decision maker (DM) knows all states and actions. However, this may not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2010-06-14 Joseph Y. Halpern , Nan Rong , Ashutosh Saxena

Regularization of control policies using entropy can be instrumental in adjusting predictability of real-world systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from, e.g., cybersecurity, which aims at maximal unpredictability, to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-18 Menno van Zutphen , Giannis Delimpaltadakis , Maurice Heemels , Duarte Antunes

Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are notably more complex to solve than standard MDPs due to the absence of universally optimal policies across all initial state distributions. This necessitates re-solving the CMDP whenever the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Alperen Tercan , Necmiye Ozay

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

We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-11 Aymen Al Marjani , Alexandre Proutiere

Solving partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) typically requires reasoning about the values of exponentially many state beliefs. Towards practical performance, state-of-the-art solvers use value bounds to guide this…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Merlijn Krale , Wietze Koops , Sebastian Junges , Thiago D. Simão , Nils Jansen