Memory-Limited Partially Observable Stochastic Control and Its Mean-Field Control Approach

Abstract

Control problems with incomplete information and memory limitation appear in many practical situations. Although partially observable stochastic control (POSC) is a conventional theoretical framework that considers the optimal control problem with incomplete information, it cannot consider memory limitation. Furthermore, POSC cannot be solved in practice except in special cases. In order to address these issues, we propose an alternative theoretical framework, memory-limited POSC (ML-POSC). ML-POSC directly considers memory limitation as well as incomplete information, and it can be solved in practice by employing the technique of mean-field control theory. ML-POSC can generalize the linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) problem to include memory limitation. Because estimation and control are not clearly separated in the LQG problem with memory limitation, the Riccati equation is modified to the partially observable Riccati equation, which improves estimation as well as control. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of ML-POSC for a non-LQG problem by comparing it with the local LQG approximation.