Related papers: Parameterized Exploration
The problem of parameterization is often central to the effective deployment of nature-inspired algorithms. However, finding the optimal set of parameter values for a combination of problem instance and solution method is highly…
Efficient exploration is an unsolved problem in Reinforcement Learning which is usually addressed by reactively rewarding the agent for fortuitously encountering novel situations. This paper introduces an efficient active exploration…
Many applications require that we learn the parameters of a model from data. EM is a method used to learn the parameters of probabilistic models for which the data for some of the variables in the models is either missing or hidden. There…
Parallelization and External Memory (PEM) techniques have significantly enhanced the capabilities of search algorithms when solving large-scale problems. Previous research on PEM has primarily centered on unidirectional algorithms, with…
We present a sample-based motion planning algorithm specialised to a class of underactuated systems using path parameterisation. The structure this class presents under a path parameterisation enables the trivial computation of dynamic…
Markov decision processes model systems subject to nondeterministic and probabilistic uncertainty. A plethora of verification techniques addresses variations of reachability properties, such as: Is there a scheduler resolving the…
The standard formulation of Markov decision processes (MDPs) assumes that the agent's decisions are executed immediately. However, in numerous realistic applications such as robotics or healthcare, actions are performed with a delay whose…
While experimental design often focuses on selecting the single best alternative from a finite set (e.g., in ranking and selection or best-arm identification), many pure-exploration problems pursue richer goals. Given a specific goal,…
We consider a sequential decision making task where we are not allowed to evaluate parameters that violate an a priori unknown (safety) constraint. A common approach is to place a Gaussian process prior on the unknown constraint and allow…
We study reward-free and reward-agnostic exploration in episodic finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs), where an agent explores an unknown environment without observing external rewards. Reward-free exploration aims to enable…
An original approach, termed Divide-and-Evolve is proposed to hybridize Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) with Operational Research (OR) methods in the domain of Temporal Planning Problems (TPPs). Whereas standard Memetic Algorithms use local…
Learning-based methods have been successful in solving complex control tasks without significant prior knowledge about the system. However, these methods typically do not provide any safety guarantees, which prevents their use in…
Effective and intelligent exploration has been an unresolved problem for reinforcement learning. Most contemporary reinforcement learning relies on simple heuristic strategies such as $\epsilon$-greedy exploration or adding Gaussian noise…
Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms are widely used in recommender systems that require continuous, incremental learning. A core aspect of MABs is the exploration-exploitation trade-off: choosing between exploiting items likely to be…
We study an exploration method for model-free RL that generalizes the counter-based exploration bonus methods and takes into account long term exploratory value of actions rather than a single step look-ahead. We propose a model-free RL…
Many efficient algorithms with strong theoretical guarantees have been proposed for the contextual multi-armed bandit problem. However, applying these algorithms in practice can be difficult because they require domain expertise to build…
In this paper we consider the problem of how a reinforcement learning agent that is tasked with solving a sequence of reinforcement learning problems (a sequence of Markov decision processes) can use knowledge acquired early in its lifetime…
Exploration is a fundamental problem in robotics. While sampling-based planners have shown high performance, they are oftentimes compute intensive and can exhibit high variance. To this end, we propose to directly learn the underlying…
Path planning in robotics often involves solving continuously valued, high-dimensional problems. Popular informed approaches include graph-based searches, such as A*, and sampling-based methods, such as Informed RRT*, which utilize informed…
Large pretrained language models are widely used in downstream NLP tasks via task-specific fine-tuning, but such procedures can be costly. Recently, Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods have achieved strong task performance while…