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Quantifying and Managing Uncertainty in Piecewise-Deterministic Markov Processes

Early Career Math Colloquium

Quantifying and Managing Uncertainty in Piecewise-Deterministic Markov Processes
Series: Early Career Math Colloquium
Location: Online
Presenter: Elliot Cartee, University of Chicago

In piecewise-deterministic Markov processes (PDMP) the state of a finite-dimensional system evolves dynamically, but the evolutive equation may change randomly as a result of discrete switches. A running cost is integrated along the corresponding piecewise-deterministic trajectory up to the termination to produce the cumulative cost of the process. We address three natural questions related to uncertainty in cumulative cost of PDMP models: (1) how to compute the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the cumulative cost when the switching rates are fully known; (2) how to accurately bound the CDF when the switching rates are uncertain; and (3) assuming the PDMP is controlled, how to select a control to optimize that CDF. In all three cases, our approach requires posing a system of suitable hyperbolic partial differential equations, which are then solved numerically on an augmented state space. We illustrate our method using simple examples of trajectory planning under uncertainty for several exit-time problems. Joint work with Antonio Farah, April Nellis, Jacob van Hook, and Alexander Vladimirsky.