Related papers: Exploitation of Multiple Replenishing Resources wi…
Many real optimisation problems lead to multimodal domains and so require the identification of multiple optima. Niching methods have been developed to maintain the population diversity, to investigate many peaks in parallel and to reduce…
Bandit based methods for tree search have recently gained popularity when applied to huge trees, e.g. in the game of go [6]. Their efficient exploration of the tree enables to re- turn rapidly a good value, and improve preci- sion if more…
Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a powerful algorithm for solving complex decision-making problems. This paper presents an optimized MCTS implementation applied to the FrozenLake environment, a classic reinforcement learning task…
We consider a distribution logistics scenario where a shipping operator, managing a limited amount of resources, receives a stream of collection requests, issued by a set of customers along a booking time-horizon, that are referred to a…
We introduce a variant of the capacitated vehicle routing problem that is encountered in sensor networks for scientific data collection. Consider an undirected graph $G=(V \cup \{\mathbf{sink}\},E)$. Each vertex $v \in V$ holds a…
We study the combinatorial pure exploration problem Best-Set in stochastic multi-armed bandits. In a Best-Set instance, we are given $n$ arms with unknown reward distributions, as well as a family $\mathcal{F}$ of feasible subsets over the…
Dynamic diversification---finding a set of data points with maximum diversity from a time-dependent sample pool---is an important task in recommender systems, web search, database search, and notification services, to avoid showing users…
Robots have a finite supply of resources such as fuel, battery charge, and storage space. The aim of the Stochastic Collection and Replenishment (SCAR) scenario is to use dedicated agents to refuel, recharge, or otherwise replenish robots…
We show that, in a resource allocation problem, the ex ante aggregate utility of players with cumulative-prospect-theoretic preferences can be increased over deterministic allocations by implementing lotteries. We formulate an optimization…
In an information-processing investment game, such as the growth of a population of organisms in a changing environment, Kelly betting maximizes the expected log rate of growth. In this paper, we show that Kelly bets are closely related to…
Content caching at intermediate nodes is a very effective way to optimize the operations of Computer networks, so that future requests can be served without going back to the origin of the content. Several caching techniques have been…
Online social networks have become the medium for efficient viral marketing exploiting social influence in information diffusion. However, the emerging application Social Coupon (SC) incorporating social referral into coupons cannot be…
Many decisions involve choosing an uncertain course of actions in deep and wide decision trees, as when we plan to visit an exotic country for vacation. In these cases, exhaustive search for the best sequence of actions is not tractable due…
We initiate the study of a quantity that we call coordination complexity. In a distributed optimization problem, the information defining a problem instance is distributed among $n$ parties, who need to each choose an action, which jointly…
In the cup game, an adversary distributes 1 unit of water among $n$ cups every time step. The player then selects a single cup from which to remove 1 unit of water. In the bamboo trimming problem, the adversary must choose fixed rates for…
We study a cache network in which intermediate nodes equipped with caches can serve requests. We model the problem of jointly optimizing caching and routing decisions with link capacity constraints over an arbitrary network topology. This…
Biological processes, including cell differentiation, organism development, and disease progression, can be interpreted as attractors (fixed points or limit cycles) of an underlying networked dynamical system. In this paper, we study the…
The scenario-based optimization approach (`scenario approach') provides an intuitive way of approximating the solution to chance-constrained optimization programs, based on finding the optimal solution under a finite number of sampled…
Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a sampling best-first method to search for optimal decisions. The MCTS's popularity is based on its extraordinary results in the challenging two-player based game Go, a game considered much harder than…
Resource constrained shortest path problems are usually solved thanks to a smart enumeration of all the non-dominated paths. Recent improvements of these enumeration algorithms rely on the use of bounds on path resources to discard partial…