Related papers: Weakly Time-Coupled Approximation of Markov Decisi…
We propose and analyze a temporal concatenation heuristic for solving large-scale finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP), which divides the MDP into smaller sub-problems along the time horizon and generates an overall solution by…
Heterogeneity poses a fundamental challenge for many real-world large-scale decision-making problems but remains largely understudied. In this paper, we study the fully heterogeneous setting of a prominent class of such problems, known as…
Recently, suboptimality estimates for model predictive controllers (MPC) have been derived for the case without additional stabilizing endpoint constraints or a Lyapunov function type endpoint weight. The proposed methods yield a posteriori…
Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…
We study the problem of learning optimal policies in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) using low-rank reinforcement learning (RL) methods. In finite-horizon MDPs, the policies, and therefore the value functions (VFs) are not…
We introduce a mesh-type approach for tackling discrete-time, finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) characterized by state and action spaces that are general, encompassing both finite and infinite (yet suitably regular) subsets of…
We consider multiple parallel Markov decision processes (MDPs) coupled by global constraints, where the time varying objective and constraint functions can only be observed after the decision is made. Special attention is given to how well…
We introduce a framework to approximate a Markov Decision Process that stands on two pillars: state aggregation -- as the algorithmic infrastructure; and central-limit-theorem-type approximations -- as the mathematical underpinning of…
Constrained partially observable Markov decision processes (CPOMDPs) have been used to model various real-world phenomena. However, they are notoriously difficult to solve to optimality, and there exist only a few approximation methods for…
In this paper, we investigate the problem of Model Predictive Control (MPC) of dynamic systems for high-level specifications described by Signal Temporal Logic (STL) formulae. Recent works show that MPC has the great potential in handling…
Load balancing and auto scaling are at the core of scalable, contemporary systems, addressing dynamic resource allocation and service rate adjustments in response to workload changes. This paper introduces a novel model and algorithms for…
Existing results on finite-time model predictive control (MPC) often rely on terminal equality constraint, switching inside one-step region, or terminal cost with short control horizon, leading to limited initial feasibility. This paper…
In many operations management problems, we need to make decisions sequentially to minimize the cost while satisfying certain constraints. One modeling approach to study such problems is constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). When…
We propose weakly coupled deep Q-networks (WCDQN), a novel deep reinforcement learning algorithm that enhances performance in a class of structured problems called weakly coupled Markov decision processes (WCMDP). WCMDPs consist of multiple…
Discrete time stochastic optimal control problems and Markov decision processes (MDPs), respectively, serve as fundamental models for problems that involve sequential decision making under uncertainty and as such constitute the theoretical…
This paper proposes a new sampling-based nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) algorithm, with a bound on complexity quadratic in the prediction horizon N and linear in the number of samples. The idea of the proposed algorithm is to use…
This paper considers optimization over multiple renewal systems coupled by time average constraints. These systems act asynchronously over variable length frames. For each system, at the beginning of each renewal frame, it chooses an action…
We propose a new policy, called the LP-update policy, to solve finite horizon weakly-coupled Markov decision processes. The latter can be seen as multi-constraint multi-action bandits, and generalize the classical restless bandit problems.…
Procedural content generation often requires satisfying both designer-specified objectives and adjacency constraints implicitly imposed by the underlying tile set. To address the challenges of jointly optimizing both constraints and…
This paper addresses the challenge of solving Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with $d > 1$ constraints when the transition dynamics are unknown, but samples can be drawn from a generative model. We propose a model-based…