Multi-Environment POMDPs: Discrete Model Uncertainty Under Partial Observability

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bovy, Eline M., Probine, Caleb, Suilen, Marnix, Topcu, Ufuk, Jansen, Nils
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bovy, Eline M.
Probine, Caleb
Suilen, Marnix
Topcu, Ufuk
Jansen, Nils
author_facet Bovy, Eline M.
Probine, Caleb
Suilen, Marnix
Topcu, Ufuk
Jansen, Nils
contents Multi-environment POMDPs (ME-POMDPs) extend standard POMDPs with discrete model uncertainty. ME-POMDPs represent a finite set of POMDPs that share the same state, action, and observation spaces, but may arbitrarily vary in their transition, observation, and reward models. Such models arise, for instance, when multiple domain experts disagree on how to model a problem. The goal is to find a single policy that is robust against any choice of POMDP within the set, i.e., a policy that maximizes the worst-case reward across all POMDPs. We generalize and expand on existing work in the following way. First, we show that ME-POMDPs can be generalized to POMDPs with sets of initial beliefs, which we call adversarial-belief POMDPs (AB-POMDPs). Second, we show that any arbitrary ME-POMDP can be reduced to a ME-POMDP that only varies in its transition and reward functions or only in its observation and reward functions, while preserving (optimal) policies. We then devise exact and approximate (point-based) algorithms to compute robust policies for AB-POMDPs, and thus ME-POMDPs. We demonstrate that we can compute policies for standard POMDP benchmarks extended to the multi-environment setting.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_23744
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-Environment POMDPs: Discrete Model Uncertainty Under Partial Observability
Bovy, Eline M.
Probine, Caleb
Suilen, Marnix
Topcu, Ufuk
Jansen, Nils
Artificial Intelligence
Multi-environment POMDPs (ME-POMDPs) extend standard POMDPs with discrete model uncertainty. ME-POMDPs represent a finite set of POMDPs that share the same state, action, and observation spaces, but may arbitrarily vary in their transition, observation, and reward models. Such models arise, for instance, when multiple domain experts disagree on how to model a problem. The goal is to find a single policy that is robust against any choice of POMDP within the set, i.e., a policy that maximizes the worst-case reward across all POMDPs. We generalize and expand on existing work in the following way. First, we show that ME-POMDPs can be generalized to POMDPs with sets of initial beliefs, which we call adversarial-belief POMDPs (AB-POMDPs). Second, we show that any arbitrary ME-POMDP can be reduced to a ME-POMDP that only varies in its transition and reward functions or only in its observation and reward functions, while preserving (optimal) policies. We then devise exact and approximate (point-based) algorithms to compute robust policies for AB-POMDPs, and thus ME-POMDPs. We demonstrate that we can compute policies for standard POMDP benchmarks extended to the multi-environment setting.
title Multi-Environment POMDPs: Discrete Model Uncertainty Under Partial Observability
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23744