Related papers: Probabilistically Faulty Searching on a Half-Line
Anytime heuristic search algorithms try to find a (potentially suboptimal) solution as quickly as possible and then work to find better and better solutions until an optimal solution is obtained or time is exhausted. The most widely-known…
Simple heuristics often show a remarkable performance in practice for optimization problems. Worst-case analysis often falls short of explaining this performance. Because of this, "beyond worst-case analysis" of algorithms has recently…
We use a Bayesian approach to optimally solve problems in noisy binary search. We deal with two variants: 1. Each comparison can be erroneous with some probability $1 - p$. 2. At each stage $k$ comparisons can be performed in parallel and a…
We investigate hide-and-seek games on complex networks using a random walk framework. Specifically, we investigate the efficiency of various degree-biased random walk search strategies to locate items that are randomly hidden on a subset of…
A random search is a stochastic process representing the random motion of a particle (denoted as the searcher) that is terminated when it reaches (detects) a target particle or area the first time. In intermittent search the random motion…
We consider a parallel version of a classical Bayesian search problem. $k$ agents are looking for a treasure that is placed in one of the boxes indexed by $\mathbb{N}^+$ according to a known distribution $p$. The aim is to minimize the…
Let $f:2^{E} \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}_+$ be a submodular function on a ground set $E = [n]$, and let $P(f)$ denote its extended polymatroid. Given a direction $d \in \mathbb{Z}^n$ with at least one positive entry, the line search problem is…
Consider search on an infinite line involving an autonomous robot starting at the origin of the line and an oblivious moving target at initial distance $d \geq 1$ from it. The robot can change direction and move anywhere on the line with…
We study the search kinetics of an immobile target by a concentration of randomly moving searchers. The object of the study is to optimize the probability of detection within the constraints of our model. The target is hidden on a…
We solve a sequential decision-making problem under uncertainty that takes into account the failure probability of a task. This problem cannot be handled by the stochastic shortest path problem, which is the standard model for sequential…
We study the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a matroid constraint and present a deterministic algorithm that achieves (1/2 + {\epsilon})-approximation for the problem. This algorithm is the first…
We revisit the problem of searching for a target at an unknown location on a line when given upper and lower bounds on the distance D that separates the initial position of the searcher from the target. Prior to this work, only asymptotic…
We present a homotopic approach to solving challenging, optimization-based motion planning problems. The approach uses Homotopy Optimization, which, unlike standard continuation methods for solving homotopy problems, solves a sequence of…
We revisit the noisy binary search model of Karp and Kleinberg, in which we have $n$ coins with unknown probabilities $p_i$ that we can flip. The coins are sorted by increasing $p_i$, and we would like to find where the probability crosses…
Boltzmann exploration is a classic strategy for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, and is one of the most standard tools in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Despite its widespread use, there is virtually no theoretical understanding…
This paper considers a generalization of the Path Finding (PF) problem with refuelling constraints referred to as the Gas Station Problem (GSP). Similar to PF, given a graph where vertices are gas stations with known fuel prices, and edge…
Partial search has been proposed recently for finding the target block containing a target element with fewer queries than the full Grover search algorithm which can locate the target precisely. Since such partial searches will likely be…
We study a generalized binary search problem on the line and general trees. On the line (e.g., a sorted array), binary search finds a target node in $O(\log n)$ queries in the worst case, where $n$ is the number of nodes. In situations with…
Quasi-Newton methods refer to a class of algorithms at the interface between first and second order methods. They aim to progress as substantially as second order methods per iteration, while maintaining the computational complexity of…
We consider linear search for an escaping target whose speed and initial position are unknown to the searcher. A searcher (an autonomous mobile agent) is initially placed at the origin of the real line and can move with maximum speed $1$ in…