Related papers: Acceleration Operators in the Value Iteration Algo…
One of the most widely used methods for solving average cost MDP problems is the value iteration method. This method, however, is often computationally impractical and restricted in size of solvable MDP problems. We propose acceleration…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) have recently become popular among many AI researchers because they serve as a natural model for planning under uncertainty. Value iteration is a well-known algorithm for finding…
Value iteration is a fixed point iteration technique utilized to obtain the optimal value function and policy in a discounted reward Markov Decision Process (MDP). Here, a contraction operator is constructed and applied repeatedly to arrive…
We present a technique for speeding up the convergence of value iteration for partially observable Markov decisions processes (POMDPs). The underlying idea is similar to that behind modified policy iteration for fully observable Markov…
Value iteration is a well-known method of solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that is simple to implement and boasts strong theoretical convergence guarantees. However, the computational cost of value iteration quickly becomes…
In this paper we provide faster algorithms for approximately solving discounted Markov Decision Processes in multiple parameter regimes. Given a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) with $|S|$ states, $|A|$ actions, discount factor…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model stochastic systems in many applications. Several efficient algorithms to compute optimal policies have been studied in the literature, including value iteration (VI) and policy iteration.…
Planning problems where effects of actions are non-deterministic can be modeled as Markov decision processes. Planning problems are usually goal-directed. This paper proposes several techniques for exploiting the goal-directedness to…
Value Iteration is a widely used algorithm for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While previous studies have extensively analyzed its convergence properties, they primarily focus on convergence with respect to the infinity norm. In…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Mean payoff (or long-run average reward) provides a mathematically elegant formalism to express performance related…
We study value-iteration (VI) algorithms for solving general (a.k.a. multichain) Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the average-reward criterion, a fundamental but theoretically challenging setting. Beyond the difficulties inherent to…
Processes (MDPs) often require frequent decision making, that is, taking an action every microsecond, second, or minute. Infinite horizon discount reward formulation is still relevant for a large portion of these applications, because…
Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…
Value iteration is a commonly used and empirically competitive method in solving many Markov decision process problems. However, it is known that value iteration has only pseudo-polynomial complexity in general. We establish a somewhat…
The problem of constrained Markov decision process is considered. An agent aims to maximize the expected accumulated discounted reward subject to multiple constraints on its costs (the number of constraints is relatively small). A new dual…
This paper establishes that an MDP with a unique optimal policy and ergodic associated transition matrix ensures the convergence of various versions of the Value Iteration algorithm at a geometric rate that exceeds the discount factor…
We build on a recently introduced geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to analyze classical MDP-solving algorithms: Value Iteration (VI) and Policy Iteration (PI). First, we develop a geometry-based analytical…
We consider the problem of computing optimal policies in average-reward Markov decision processes. This classical problem can be formulated as a linear program directly amenable to saddle-point optimization methods, albeit with a number of…
In this paper we propose a novel algorithm, factored value iteration (FVI), for the approximate solution of factored Markov decision processes (fMDPs). The traditional approximate value iteration algorithm is modified in two ways. For one,…
In many sequential decision-making problems we may want to manage risk by minimizing some measure of variability in rewards in addition to maximizing a standard criterion. Variance related risk measures are among the most common…