Related papers: Planning in entropy-regularized Markov decision pr…
I propose a new algorithm, a free energy Monte Carlo algorithm, for calculations where conventional Monte Carlo simulations struggle with ergodicity problems. The simplest version of the proposed algorithm allows for the determination of…
Kalman filtering and smoothing are the foundational mechanisms for efficient inference in Gauss-Markov models. However, their time and memory complexities scale prohibitively with the size of the state space. This is particularly…
Smooth entropies are a tool for quantifying resource trade-offs in (quantum) information theory and cryptography. In typical bi- and multi-partite problems, however, some of the sub-systems are often left unchanged and this is not reflected…
Multistage robust optimization problems can be interpreted as two-person zero-sum games between two players. We exploit this game-like nature and utilize a game tree search in order to solve quantified integer programs (QIPs). In this…
In the current work we introduce a novel estimation of distribution algorithm to tackle a hard combinatorial optimization problem, namely the single-machine scheduling problem, with uncertain delivery times. The majority of the existing…
Estimating the state of a dynamical system from a series of noise-corrupted observations is fundamental in many areas of science and engineering. The most well-known method, the Kalman smoother (and the related Kalman filter), relies on…
Estimating the expectation of a real-valued function of a random variable from sample data is a critical aspect of statistical analysis, with far-reaching implications in various applications. Current methodologies typically assume…
Standard stochastic control methods assume that the probability distribution of uncertain variables is available. Unfortunately, in practice, obtaining accurate distribution information is a challenging task. To resolve this issue, we…
Inspired by the latest developments in multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods and randomised sketching for linear algebra problems we propose a MLMC estimator for real-time processing of matrix structured random data. Our algorithm is…
The Metropolis algorithm is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm used to simulate from parameter distributions of interest, such as generalized linear model parameters. The "Metropolis step" is a keystone concept that underlies…
We consider the problem of learning the optimal policy for Markov decision processes with safety constraints. We formulate the problem in a reach-avoid setup. Our goal is to design online reinforcement learning algorithms that ensure safety…
In this paper, sample-aware policy entropy regularization is proposed to enhance the conventional policy entropy regularization for better exploration. Exploiting the sample distribution obtainable from the replay buffer, the proposed…
Risk-bounded motion planning is an important yet difficult problem for safety-critical tasks. While existing mathematical programming methods offer theoretical guarantees in the context of constrained Markov decision processes, they either…
Entropy regularized algorithms such as Soft Q-learning and Soft Actor-Critic, recently showed state-of-the-art performance on a number of challenging reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. The regularized formulation modifies the standard RL…
In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…
Markov decision processes (MDP) are useful to model optimisation problems in concurrent systems. To verify MDPs with efficient Monte Carlo techniques requires that their nondeterminism be resolved by a scheduler. Recent work has introduced…
Any classifier can be "smoothed out" under Gaussian noise to build a new classifier that is provably robust to $\ell_2$-adversarial perturbations, viz., by averaging its predictions over the noise via randomized smoothing. Under the…
Sample-based trajectory optimisers are a promising tool for the control of robotics with non-differentiable dynamics and cost functions. Contemporary approaches derive from a restricted subclass of stochastic optimal control where the…
Often one has a preference order among the different systems that satisfy a given specification. Under a probabilistic assumption about the possible inputs, such a preference order is naturally expressed by a weighted automaton, which…
Markov decision processes (MDP) are a well-established model for sequential decision-making in the presence of probabilities. In robust MDP (RMDP), every action is associated with an uncertainty set of probability distributions, modelling…