Many hierarchical techniques to solve large Markov decision processes (MDPs) are based on the partition of the state space into strongly connected components (SCCs) that can be classified into some levels. In each level, smaller problems named restricted MDPs are solved, and then these partial solutions are combined to obtain the global solution. In this paper, we first propose a novel algorith...

In this paper, we introduce the notion of a bounded parameter Markov decision process as a generalization of the traditional exact MDP. A bounded parameter MDP is a set of exact MDPs speciied by giving upper and lower bounds on transition probabilities and rewards (all the MDPs in the set share the same state and action space). Bounded parameter MDPs can be used to represent variation or uncert...

To navigate in natural environments, a robot must decide the best action to take according to its current situation and goal, a problem that can be represented as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). In general, it is assumed that a reasonable state representation and transition model can be provided by the user to the system. When dealing with complex domains, however, it is not always easy or pos...