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Will the strategy of resetting} help a stochastic process to reach its target efficiently, with its environment continually toggling between a strongly favourable and an unfavourable (or weakly favourable) state? A diffusive run-and-tumble…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-03-04 Hillol kumar Barman , Amitabha Nandi , Dibyendu Das

Active navigation in disordered media depends on a biased random walk interacting with environmental constraints. Using E. coli chemotactic navigation in agar gels as a model system, we reveal a fundamental trade-off between diffusive…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-23 Yang Bai , Caiyun He , Weirong Liu , Songtao Cheng , Pan Chu , Liang Luo , Chenli Liu , Xiongfei Fu

Among sub-optimal Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) solvers, rule-based algorithms are particularly appealing since they are complete. Even in crowded scenarios, they allow finding a feasible solution that brings each agent to its target,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-10-11 Irene Saccani , Stefano Ardizzoni , Luca Consolini , Marco Locatelli

Exploration in unknown environments is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning and control. In this work, we study task-guided exploration and determine what precisely an agent must learn about their environment in order to complete…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Andrew Wagenmaker , Max Simchowitz , Kevin Jamieson

We explore the case of a group of random walkers looking for a target randomly located in space, such that the number of walkers is not constant but new ones can join the search, or those that are active can abandon it, with constant rates…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-11-30 Daniel Campos , Vicenç Méndez

We theoretically address minimal search strategies of active, self-propelled particles towards hidden targets in three-dimensional space. The particles can sense if a target is close, e.g., by detecting signaling molecules released by a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-03-22 Justus A. Kromer , Andrea Auconi , Benjamin M. Friedrich

Living organisms have developed advanced motion strategies for efficient space exploration, serving as inspiration for the movements of microrobots. These real-life strategies often involve anomalous dynamics displaying random movement…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-11-06 Alessia Gentili , Rainer Klages , Giorgio Volpe

We investigate the autonomous navigation of a mobile robot in the presence of other moving vehicles under time-varying uncertain environmental disturbances. We first predict the future state distributions of other vehicles to account for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-09-09 Junhong Xu , Kai Yin , Lantao Liu

Many real-world optimisation problems involve dynamic and stochastic components. While problems with multiple interacting components are omnipresent in inherently dynamic domains like supply-chain optimisation and logistics, most research…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-09-16 Ragav Sachdeva , Frank Neumann , Markus Wagner

Reinforcement learning for control over continuous spaces typically uses high-entropy stochastic policies, such as Gaussian distributions, for local exploration and estimating policy gradient to optimize performance. Many robotic control…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-03 Ya-Chien Chang , Sicun Gao

Foraging is a fundamental behavior as animals' search for food is crucial for their survival. Patch leaving is a canonical foraging behavior, but classic theoretical conceptions of patch leaving decisions lack some key naturalistic details.…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-04-23 Zachary P Kilpatrick , Jacob D Davidson , Ahmed El Hady

We demonstrate the presence of chaos in stochastic simulations that are widely used to study biodiversity in nature. The investigation deals with a set of three distinct species that evolve according to the standard rules of mobility,…

Biological Physics · Physics 2017-03-28 D. Bazeia , M. B. P. N. Pereira , A. V. Brito , B. F. de Oliveira , J. G. G. S. Ramos

Understanding how simple local interactions give rise to emergent exploration patterns is a fundamental question in statistical physics. We introduce a minimal model of two coupled agents that avoid retracing their own paths while being…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2026-03-24 Nick Dashti , M. N. Najafi , Debra J. Searles

This paper tackles the problem of integrated task and kinodynamic motion planning in uncertain environments. We consider a robot with nonlinear dynamics tasked with a Linear Temporal Logic over finite traces ($\ltlf$) specification…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Qi Heng Ho , Zachary N. Sunberg , Morteza Lahijanian

While most heuristics studied in heuristic search depend only on the state, some accumulate information during search and thus also depend on the search history. Various existing approaches use such dynamic heuristics in $\mathrm{A}^*$-like…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Remo Christen , Florian Pommerening , Clemens Büchner , Malte Helmert

In this paper, we investigate the quest for a single target, that remains fixed in a lattice, by a set of independent walkers. The target exhibits a fluctuating behavior between trap and ordinary site of the lattice, whereas the walkers…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-10-18 Félix Rojo , Pedro A. Pury , Carlos E. Budde

Motile organisms often use finite spatial perception of their surroundings to navigate and search their habitats. Yet standard models of search are usually based on purely local sensory information. To model how a finite perceptual horizon…

Biological Physics · Physics 2018-12-14 Adam Gosztolai , Jose A. Carrillo , Mauricio Barahona

Foraging is a crucial activity, yet the extent to which humans employ flexible versus rigid strategies remains unclear. This study investigates how individuals adapt their foraging strategies in response to resource distribution and…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-05-13 Valeria Simonelli , Davide Nuzzi , Gian Luca Lancia , Giovanni Pezzulo

We consider the problem of selecting deterministic or stochastic models for a biological, ecological, or environmental dynamical process. In most cases, one prefers either deterministic or stochastic models as candidate models based on…

Applications · Statistics 2015-10-26 Libo Sun , Chihoon Lee , Jennifer A. Hoeting

We introduce a path sampling method for obtaining statistical properties of an arbitrary stochastic dynamics. The method works by decomposing a trajectory in time, estimating the probability of satisfying a progress constraint, modifying…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-04 Nicholas Guttenberg , Aaron R. Dinner , Jonathan Weare