Related papers: Computational Hardness of Static Distributionally …
Synthesising verifiably correct controllers for dynamical systems is crucial for safety-critical problems. To achieve this, it is important to account for uncertainty in a robust manner, while at the same time it is often of interest to…
We consider the challenge of finding a deterministic policy for a Markov decision process that uniformly (in all states) maximizes one reward subject to a probabilistic constraint over a different reward. Existing solutions do not fully…
For a Markov decision process with countably infinite states, the optimal value may not be achievable in the set of stationary policies. In this paper, we study the existence conditions of an optimal stationary policy in a countable-state…
We study discrete-time Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) on finite state-action spaces and analyze the stability of optimal policies and value functions in the long-run discounted risk-sensitive objective setting. Our analysis addresses…
We study the problem of learning policies that maximize cumulative reward while satisfying safety constraints, even when the real environment differs from a simulator or nominal model. We focus on robust constrained Markov decision…
A Markov decision problem is called reversible if the stationary controlled Markov chain is reversible under every stationary Markovian strategy. A natural application in which such problems arise is in the control of Metropolis-Hastings…
We study notions of robustness of Markov kernels and probability distribution of a system that is described by $n$ input random variables and one output random variable. Markov kernels can be expanded in a series of potentials that allow to…
In this note we provide an upper bound for the difference between the value function of a distributionally robust Markov decision problem and the value function of a non-robust Markov decision problem, where the ambiguity set of probability…
We study the synthesis of a policy in a Markov decision process (MDP) following which an agent reaches a target state in the MDP while minimizing its total discounted cost. The problem combines a reachability criterion with a discounted…
We study a notion of robustness of a Markov kernel that describes a system of several input random variables and one output random variable. Robustness requires that the behaviour of the system does not change if one or several of the input…
We consider the robust version of items selection problem, in which the goal is to choose representatives from a family of sets, preserving constraints on the allowed items' combinations. We prove NP-hardness of the deterministic version,…
We introduce a distributional method for learning the optimal policy in risk averse Markov decision process with finite state action spaces, latent costs, and stationary dynamics. We assume sequential observations of states, actions, and…
Strong and weak simulation relations have been proposed for Markov chains, while strong simulation and strong probabilistic simulation relations have been proposed for probabilistic automata. However, decision algorithms for strong and weak…
Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a general framework to model decision problems where the system dynamics are changing or only partially known. Efficient methods for some \texttt{sa}-rectangular robust MDPs exist, using its…
Specifying a proper input distribution is often a challenging task in simulation modeling. In practice, there may be multiple plausible distributions that can fit the input data reasonably well, especially when the data volume is not large.…
We consider approximate dynamic programming for the infinite-horizon stationary $\gamma$-discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. While in the exact case it is known that there always exists an optimal…
This paper presents sufficient conditions for the existence of stationary optimal policies for average-cost Markov Decision Processes with Borel state and action sets and with weakly continuous transition probabilities. The one-step cost…
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…
We consider a large family of discrete and continuous time controlled Markov processes and study an ergodic risk-sensitive minimization problem. Under a blanket stability assumption, we provide a complete analysis to this problem. In…
We adopt a policy optimization viewpoint towards policy evaluation for robust Markov decision process with $\mathrm{s}$-rectangular ambiguity sets. The developed method, named first-order policy evaluation (FRPE), provides the first unified…