Related papers: Near-Optimal Algorithms for Autonomous Exploration…

The problem of optimizing unknown costly-to-evaluate functions has been studied for a long time in the context of Bayesian Optimization. Algorithms in this field aim to find the optimizer of the function by asking only a few function…

For effective matching of resources (e.g., taxis, food, bikes, shopping items) to customer demand, aggregation systems have been extremely successful. In aggregation systems, a central entity (e.g., Uber, Food Panda, Ofo) aggregates supply…

We present Lower Bound Tree-RRT (LBT-RRT), a single-query sampling-based algorithm that is asymptotically near-optimal. Namely, the solution extracted from LBT-RRT converges to a solution that is within an approximation factor of 1+epsilon…

Exploration in high-dimensional, continuous spaces with sparse rewards is an open problem in reinforcement learning. Artificial curiosity algorithms address this by creating rewards that lead to exploration. Given a reinforcement learning…

We study a risk-constrained version of the stochastic shortest path (SSP) problem, where the risk measure considered is Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). We propose two algorithms that obtain a locally risk-optimal policy by employing four…

We consider the problem of finding an informative path through a graph, given initial and terminal nodes and a given maximum path length. We assume that a linear noise corrupted measurement is taken at each node of an underlying unknown…

Sampling-based algorithms solve the path planning problem by generating random samples in the search-space and incrementally growing a connectivity graph or a tree. Conventionally, the sampling strategy used in these algorithms is biased…

We consider an autonomous navigation problem, whereby a traveler aims at traversing an environment in which an adversary tries to set an ambush. A two players zero sum game is introduced. Players' strategies are computed as random path…

We study the active learning problem of top-$k$ ranking from multi-wise comparisons under the popular multinomial logit model. Our goal is to identify the top-$k$ items with high probability by adaptively querying sets for comparisons and…

We present and analyze an algorithm for optimizing smooth and convex or strongly convex objectives using minibatch stochastic gradient estimates. The algorithm is optimal with respect to its dependence on both the minibatch size and minimum…

In the knapsack problem under explorable uncertainty, we are given a knapsack instance with uncertain item profits. Instead of having access to the precise profits, we are only given uncertainty intervals that are guaranteed to contain the…

We study the complexity of optimizing highly smooth convex functions. For a positive integer $p$, we want to find an $\epsilon$-approximate minimum of a convex function $f$, given oracle access to the function and its first $p$ derivatives,…

A recent body of work addresses safety constraints in explore-and-exploit systems. Such constraints arise where, for example, exploration is carried out by individuals whose welfare should be balanced with overall welfare. In this paper, we…

Reinforcement learning algorithms commonly seek to optimize policies for solving one particular task. How should we explore an unknown dynamical system such that the estimated model globally approximates the dynamics and allows us to solve…

Optimal Transport (OT) based distances are powerful tools for machine learning to compare probability measures and manipulate them using OT maps. In this field, a setting of interest is semi-discrete OT, where the source measure $\mu$ is…

The exploration-exploitation dilemma has been a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL) with complex model classes. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm, Monotonic Q-Learning with Upper Confidence Bound (MQL-UCB) for RL with…

We develop a family of accelerated stochastic algorithms that minimize sums of convex functions. Our algorithms improve upon the fastest running time for empirical risk minimization (ERM), and in particular linear least-squares regression,…

In this paper, we consider the problem of generating inspection paths for robots. These paths should allow an attached measurement device to perform high-quality measurements. We formally show that generating robot paths, while maximizing…

We introduce and study the multi-agent stochastic shortest path (MSSP) problem, in which $k$ agents strive to reach a target state, aiming to minimize the expected time to reach the target by any agent. We analyze the computational and…

Partially-Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a well-known stochastic model for sequential decision making under limited information. We consider the EXPTIME-hard problem of synthesising policies that almost-surely reach some…