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Outline of several strategies for using Gaussian processes as surrogate models for the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES).
Evolution Strategies (ES) are stochastic derivative-free optimization algorithms whose most prominent representative, the CMA-ES algorithm, is widely used to solve difficult numerical optimization problems. We provide the first rigorous…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is still rarely applied in industrial control, partly due to the difficulty of training reliable agents for real-world conditions. This work investigates how evolution strategies can support RL in such settings…
We consider the multivariate response regression problem with a regression coefficient matrix of low, unknown rank. In this setting, we analyze a new criterion for selecting the optimal reduced rank. This criterion differs notably from the…
Fitting the continuum component of a quasar spectrum in UV/optical band is challenging due to contamination of numerous emission lines. Traditional fitting algorithms such as the least-square fitting and the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm…
The class of algorithms called Hessian Estimation Evolution Strategies (HE-ESs) update the covariance matrix of their sampling distribution by directly estimating the curvature of the objective function. The approach is practically…
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a highly popular model-free reinforcement learning (RL) approach. However, we observe that in a continuous action space, PPO can prematurely shrink the exploration variance, which leads to slow progress…
This paper introduces a novel competitive mechanism into differential evolution (DE), presenting an effective DE variant named competitive DE (CDE). CDE features a simple yet efficient mutation strategy: DE/winner-to-best/1. Essentially,…
The CSA-ES is an Evolution Strategy with Cumulative Step size Adaptation, where the step size is adapted measuring the length of a so-called cumulative path. The cumulative path is a combination of the previous steps realized by the…
When faced with a specific optimization problem, choosing which algorithm to use is always a tough task. Not only is there a vast variety of algorithms to select from, but these algorithms often are controlled by many hyperparameters, which…
Evolution Strategies such as CMA-ES (covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy) and NES (natural evolution strategy) have been widely used in machine learning applications, where an objective function is optimized without using its…
The CSA-ES is an Evolution Strategy with Cumulative Step size Adaptation, where the step size is adapted measuring the length of a so-called cumulative path. The cumulative path is a combination of the previous steps realized by the…
In this study, we investigate the problem of min-max continuous optimization in a black-box setting $\min_{x} \max_{y}f(x,y)$. A popular approach updates $x$ and $y$ simultaneously or alternatingly. However, two major limitations have been…
The discovery of complex multicellular organism development took millions of years of evolution. The genome of such a multicellular organism guides the development of its body from a single cell, including its control system. Our goal is to…
Evolution strategies (ESs) are zeroth-order stochastic black-box optimization heuristics invariant to monotonic transformations of the objective function. They evolve a multivariate normal distribution, from which candidate solutions are…
Multimodal optimization requires both exploration and exploitation. Exploration identifies promising attraction basins, while exploitation finds the best solutions within these basins. The balance between exploration and exploitation can be…
We consider a simple setting in neuroevolution where an evolutionary algorithm optimizes the weights and activation functions of a simple artificial neural network. We then define simple example functions to be learned by the network and…
Recent research in Cooperative Coevolution~(CC) have achieved promising progress in solving large-scale global optimization problems. However, existing CC paradigms have a primary limitation in that they require deep expertise for selecting…
There has been a recent focus in reinforcement learning on addressing continuous state and action problems by optimizing parameterized policies. PI2 is a recent example of this approach. It combines a derivation from first principles of…
Estimation of low-rank matrices is of significant interest in a range of contemporary applications. In this paper, we introduce a rank-one projection model for low-rank matrix recovery and propose a constrained nuclear norm minimization…