Efficient Solution and Learning of Robust Factored MDPs

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Schnitzer, Yannik, Abate, Alessandro, Parker, David
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Schnitzer, Yannik
Abate, Alessandro
Parker, David
author_facet Schnitzer, Yannik
Abate, Alessandro
Parker, David
contents Robust Markov decision processes (r-MDPs) extend MDPs by explicitly modelling epistemic uncertainty about transition dynamics. Learning r-MDPs from interactions with an unknown environment enables the synthesis of robust policies with provable (PAC) guarantees on performance, but this can require a large number of sample interactions. We propose novel methods for solving and learning r-MDPs based on factored state-space representations that leverage the independence between model uncertainty across system components. Although policy synthesis for factored r-MDPs leads to hard, non-convex optimisation problems, we show how to reformulate these into tractable linear programs. Building on these, we also propose methods to learn factored model representations directly. Our experimental results show that exploiting factored structure can yield dimensional gains in sample efficiency, producing more effective robust policies with tighter performance guarantees than state-of-the-art methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_00707
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Solution and Learning of Robust Factored MDPs
Schnitzer, Yannik
Abate, Alessandro
Parker, David
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robust Markov decision processes (r-MDPs) extend MDPs by explicitly modelling epistemic uncertainty about transition dynamics. Learning r-MDPs from interactions with an unknown environment enables the synthesis of robust policies with provable (PAC) guarantees on performance, but this can require a large number of sample interactions. We propose novel methods for solving and learning r-MDPs based on factored state-space representations that leverage the independence between model uncertainty across system components. Although policy synthesis for factored r-MDPs leads to hard, non-convex optimisation problems, we show how to reformulate these into tractable linear programs. Building on these, we also propose methods to learn factored model representations directly. Our experimental results show that exploiting factored structure can yield dimensional gains in sample efficiency, producing more effective robust policies with tighter performance guarantees than state-of-the-art methods.
title Efficient Solution and Learning of Robust Factored MDPs
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00707