Input/Ouput Value Function Format

This page describes the file format for a value function (a set of alpha vectors) used in the 'pomdp-solve' program.

A set of vectors is the representation use for the value function and each vector has an action associated with it. The vectors represent the coefficients of a hyperplane passing through the origin. The format specified here is what is output from the 'pomdp-solve' program and what will be necessary for input to the 'pomdp-solve' program with the '-terminal_values' command line option.

The format is simply:

      A
     V1 V2 V3 ... VN

     A
     V1 V2 V3 ... VN

     etc ...

Where A is an action number and the V1 through VN are real values representing the components of a particular vector that has the associated action. The vector represents the coefficients of a hyperplane representing one facet of the piecewise linear value function. Note that the length of the lists needs to be equal to the number of states in the POMDP.

Warning! The parser for this type of file is (currently) very brittle and doesn't handle ill-formed files very well.

Last modified: Sun Jul 26 14:25:21 MDT 2009