Related papers: Planning to Be Surprised: Optimal Bayesian Explora…

Many potential applications of reinforcement learning (RL) are stymied by the large numbers of samples required to learn an effective policy. This is especially true when applying RL to real-world control tasks, e.g. in the sciences or…

The problem of optimizing unknown costly-to-evaluate functions has been studied for a long time in the context of Bayesian Optimization. Algorithms in this field aim to find the optimizer of the function by asking only a few function…

Artificial life aims to understand the fundamental principles of biological life by creating computational models that exhibit life-like properties. Although artificial life systems show promise for simulating biological evolution,…

Excellent computer simulations are done for a purpose. The most valid purposes are to explore uncharted territory, to resolve a well-posed scientific or technical question, or to make a design choice. Stand-alone modeling can serve the…

Trained human pilots or operators still stand out through their efficient, robust, and versatile skills in guidance tasks such as driving agile vehicles in spatial environments or performing complex surgeries. This research studies how…

As robots operate in increasingly complex and dynamic environments, fast motion re-planning has become a widely explored area of research. In a real-world deployment, we often lack the ability to fully observe the environment at all times,…

Active search is a learning paradigm for actively identifying as many members of a given class as possible. A critical target scenario is high-throughput screening for scientific discovery, such as drug or materials discovery. In this…

Research in developmental psychology consistently shows that children explore the world thoroughly and efficiently and that this exploration allows them to learn. In turn, this early learning supports more robust generalization and…

Adaptive exploration methods propose ways to learn complex policies via alternating between exploration and exploitation. An important question for such methods is to determine the appropriate moment to switch between exploration and…

Identifying optimal strategies for efficient spatial exploration is crucial, both for animals seeking food and for robotic search processes, where maximizing the covered area is a fundamental requirement. Here, we propose position resetting…

Building autonomous -- i.e., choosing goals based on one's needs -- and adaptive -- i.e., surviving in ever-changing environments -- agents has been a holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI). A living organism is a prime example of such…

This paper addresses the problem of planning a safe (i.e., collision-free) trajectory from an initial state to a goal region when the obstacle space is a-priori unknown and is incrementally revealed online, e.g., through line-of-sight…

As AI models grow in power and generality, understanding how agents learn and make decisions in complex environments is critical to promoting ethical behavior. This study introduces the Odyssey, a lightweight, adaptive text based adventure…

Autonomous exploration is a complex task where the robot moves through an unknown environment with the goal of mapping it. The desired output of such a process is a sequence of paths that efficiently and safely minimise the uncertainty of…

We consider an active visual exploration scenario, where an agent must intelligently select its camera motions to efficiently reconstruct the full environment from only a limited set of narrow field-of-view glimpses. While the agent has…

Reinforcement learning systems are often concerned with balancing exploration of untested actions against exploitation of actions that are known to be good. The benefit of exploration can be estimated using the classical notion of Value of…

In order to enable Micro-Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) to assist in complex, unknown, unstructured environments, they must be able to navigate with guaranteed safety, even when faced with a cluttered environment they have no prior knowledge of.…

How should we gather information to make effective decisions? We address Bayesian active learning and experimental design problems, where we sequentially select tests to reduce uncertainty about a set of hypotheses. Instead of minimizing…

In this extended abstract we discuss the opportunities and challenges of studying intrinsically-motivated agents for exploration in textual environments. We argue that there is important synergy between text environments and autonomous…

The use of mobile robots is being popular over the world mainly for autonomous explorations in hazardous/ toxic or unknown environments. This exploration will be more effective and efficient if the explorations in unknown environment can be…