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Deciding the Value 1 Problem for \(\sharp\)-acyclic Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

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SOFSEM 2014: Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SOFSEM 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8327))

Abstract

The value 1 problem is a natural decision problem in algorithmic game theory. For partially observable Markov decision processes with reachability objective, this problem is defined as follows: are there observational strategies that achieve the reachability objective with probability arbitrarily close to 1? This problem was shown undecidable recently. Our contribution is to introduce a class of partially observable Markov decision processes, namely \(\sharp-acyclic\) partially observable Markov decision processes, for which the value 1 problem is decidable. Our algorithm is based on the construction of a two-player perfect information game, called the knowledge game, abstracting the behaviour of a \(\sharp\)-acyclic partially observable Markov decision process \({\mathcal M}\) such that the first player has a winning strategy in the knowledge game if and only if the value of \({\mathcal M}\) is 1.

This work has been supported by the ANR project ECSPER (JC09_472677) and the ARC project Game Theory for the Automatic Synthesis of Computer Systems.

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Gimbert, H., Oualhadj, Y. (2014). Deciding the Value 1 Problem for \(\sharp\)-acyclic Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes. In: Geffert, V., Preneel, B., Rovan, B., Štuller, J., Tjoa, A.M. (eds) SOFSEM 2014: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8327. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04298-5_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04298-5_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04297-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04298-5

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