- Robust Markov Decision Processes Wolfram Wiesemann (wwiesemaimperial.ac.uk) Daniel Kuhn (dkuhnimperial.ac.uk) Berc Rustem (brimperial.ac.uk) Abstract: Markov decision processes (MDPs) are powerful tools for decision making in uncertain dynamic environments. However, the solutions of MDPs are of limited practical use due to their sensitivity to distributional model parameters, which are typically unknown and have to be estimated by the decision maker. To counter the detrimental effects of estimation errors, we consider robust MDPs that offer probabilistic guarantees in view of the unknown parameters. To this end, we assume that an observation history of the MDP is available. Based on this history, we derive a confidence region that contains the unknown parameters with a pre-specified probability $1 - \beta$. Afterwards, we determine a policy that attains the highest worst-case performance over this confidence region. By construction, this policy achieves or exceeds its worst-case performance with a confidence of at least $1 - \beta$. Our method involves the solution of tractable conic programs of moderate size. Keywords: Robust Optimisation; Markov Decision Processes; Semidefinite Programming Category 1: Robust Optimization Category 2: Other Topics (Dynamic Programming ) Citation: Working paper, Department of Computing, Imperial College London, May 2010 Download: [PDF]Entry Submitted: 05/05/2010Entry Accepted: 05/05/2010Entry Last Modified: 02/09/2012Modify/Update this entry Visitors Authors More about us Links Subscribe, Unsubscribe Digest Archive Search, Browse the Repository Submit Update Policies Coordinator's Board Classification Scheme Credits Give us feedback Optimization Journals, Sites, Societies Optimization Online is supported by the Mathematical Optmization Society.