Non-Parametric Approximate Dynamic Programming via the Kernel Method

This paper presents a novel non-parametric approximate dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm that enjoys graceful approximation and sample complexity guarantees. In particular, we establish both theoretically and computationally that our proposal can serve as a viable alternative to state-of-the-art p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bhat, Nikhil, Farias, Vivek F., Moallemi, Ciamac C.
Other Authors: Sloan School of Management
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/89425
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5856-9246
Description
Summary:This paper presents a novel non-parametric approximate dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm that enjoys graceful approximation and sample complexity guarantees. In particular, we establish both theoretically and computationally that our proposal can serve as a viable alternative to state-of-the-art parametric ADP algorithms, freeing the designer from carefully specifying an approximation architecture. We accomplish this by developing a kernel-based mathematical program for ADP. Via a computational study on a controlled queueing network, we show that our procedure is competitive with parametric ADP approaches.