10,205 research outputs found
Average optimality for continuous-time Markov decision processes under weak continuity conditions
This article considers the average optimality for a continuous-time Markov
decision process with Borel state and action spaces and an arbitrarily
unbounded nonnegative cost rate. The existence of a deterministic stationary
optimal policy is proved under a different and general set of conditions as
compared to the previous literature; the controlled process can be explosive,
the transition rates can be arbitrarily unbounded and are weakly continuous,
the multifunction defining the admissible action spaces can be neither
compact-valued nor upper semi-continuous, and the cost rate is not necessarily
inf-compact
Verification of Uncertain POMDPs Using Barrier Certificates
We consider a class of partially observable Markov decision processes
(POMDPs) with uncertain transition and/or observation probabilities. The
uncertainty takes the form of probability intervals. Such uncertain POMDPs can
be used, for example, to model autonomous agents with sensors with limited
accuracy, or agents undergoing a sudden component failure, or structural damage
[1]. Given an uncertain POMDP representation of the autonomous agent, our goal
is to propose a method for checking whether the system will satisfy an optimal
performance, while not violating a safety requirement (e.g. fuel level,
velocity, and etc.). To this end, we cast the POMDP problem into a switched
system scenario. We then take advantage of this switched system
characterization and propose a method based on barrier certificates for
optimality and/or safety verification. We then show that the verification task
can be carried out computationally by sum-of-squares programming. We illustrate
the efficacy of our method by applying it to a Mars rover exploration example.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
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