# Hidden Parameter Markov Decision Processes: A Semiparametric Regression Approach for Discovering Latent Task Parametrizations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.3513 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.3513/

## Key facts

- Cited by 70 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Aug 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 70)

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- [Step-DAD: Semi-Amortized Policy-Based Bayesian Experimental Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14057/) (2025)
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- [The Impact of Task Underspecification in Evaluating Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08607/) (2022)
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- [RILI: Robustly Influencing Latent Intent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12705/) (2022)
- [Hidden Parameter Recurrent State Space Models For Changing Dynamics Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14697/) (2022)
- [Model-based Reinforcement Learning for Parameterized Action Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03037/) (2024)
- [Hybrid Transfer Reinforcement Learning: Provable Sample Efficiency from Shifted-Dynamics Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03810/) (2024)
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## Abstract (arXiv)

Control applications often feature tasks with similar, but not identical, dynamics. We introduce the Hidden Parameter Markov Decision Process (HiP-MDP), a framework that parametrizes a family of related dynamical systems with a low-dimensional set of latent factors, and introduce a semiparametric regression approach for learning its structure from data. In the control setting, we show that a learned HiP-MDP rapidly identifies the dynamics of a new task instance, allowing an agent to flexibly adapt to task variations.
