Related papers: Approximate Novelty Search
Searching the space of policies directly for the optimal policy has been one popular method for solving partially observable reinforcement learning problems. Typically, with each change of the target policy, its value is estimated from the…
Robotics grasping refers to the task of making a robotic system pick an object by applying forces and torques on its surface. Despite the recent advances in data-driven approaches, grasping remains an unsolved problem. Most of the works on…
Given a hierarchical plan (or schedule) with uncertain task times, we propose a deterministic polynomial (time and memory) algorithm for estimating the probability that its meets a deadline, or, alternately, that its {\em makespan} is less…
We introduce a search problem generalizing the typical setting of Binary Search on the line. Similar to the setting for Binary Search, a target is chosen adversarially on the line, and in response to a query, the algorithm learns whether…
Guided policy search algorithms can be used to optimize complex nonlinear policies, such as deep neural networks, without directly computing policy gradients in the high-dimensional parameter space. Instead, these methods use supervised…
We study the similarity search problem which aims to find the similar query results according to a set of given data and a query string. To balance the result number and result quality, we combine query result diversity with query…
We present approximation algorithms for maximum independent set of pseudo-disks in the plane, both in the weighted and unweighted cases. For the unweighted case, we prove that a local search algorithm yields a \PTAS. For the weighted case,…
Search is a major technique for planning. It amounts to exploring a state space of planning domains typically modeled as a directed graph. However, prohibitively large sizes of the search space make search expensive. Developing better…
Exploring search spaces is one of the most unpredictable challenges that has attracted the interest of researchers for decades. One way to handle unpredictability is to characterise the search spaces and take actions accordingly. A…
In automated planning, control parameters extend standard action representations through the introduction of continuous numeric decision variables. Existing state-of-the-art approaches have primarily handled control parameters as embedded…
We propose a new clustering algorithm, Extended Affinity Propagation, based on pairwise similarities. Extended Affinity Propagation is developed by modifying Affinity Propagation such that the desirable features of Affinity Propagation,…
A common problem in machine learning is to rank a set of n items based on pairwise comparisons. Here ranking refers to partitioning the items into sets of pre-specified sizes according to their scores, which includes identification of the…
We propose a novel sparse preference learning/ranking algorithm. Our algorithm approximates the true utility function by a weighted sum of basis functions using the squared loss on pairs of data points, and is a generalization of the kernel…
This paper focuses on the further development of the Lie bracket approximation approach for extremum seeking systems. Classical results in this area provide extremum seeking algorithms with exponential convergence rates for quadratic-like…
Continuing our preleminary work \cite{knowles14}, we define the safest-with-sight pathfinding problems and explore its solution using techniques borrowed from measure-theoretic probability theory. We find a simple recursive definition for…
Large-scale approximate nearest neighbor search (ANN) has been gaining attention along with the latest machine learning researches employing ANNs. If the data is too large to fit in memory, it is necessary to search for the most similar…
This paper discusses a methodology for determining a functional representation of a random process from a collection of scattered pointwise samples. The present work specifically focuses onto random quantities lying in a high dimensional…
This article presents a new search algorithm for the NP-hard problem of optimizing functions of binary variables that decompose according to a graphical model. It can be applied to models of any order and structure. The main novelty is a…
We study spectral algorithms for the high-dimensional Nearest Neighbor Search problem (NNS). In particular, we consider a semi-random setting where a dataset $P$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is chosen arbitrarily from an unknown subspace of low…
Retrieval pipelines commonly rely on a term-based search to obtain candidate records, which are subsequently re-ranked. Some candidates are missed by this approach, e.g., due to a vocabulary mismatch. We address this issue by replacing the…