Related papers: Near-Optimal Algorithms for Autonomous Exploration…
In this paper, we consider the problem of path finding for a set of homogeneous and autonomous agents navigating a previously unknown stochastic environment. In our problem setting, each agent attempts to maximize a given utility function…
In probably approximately correct (PAC) reinforcement learning (RL), an agent is required to identify an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with probability $1-\delta$. While minimax optimal algorithms exist for this problem, its instance-dependent…
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…
Exploration is critical to a reinforcement learning agent's performance in its given environment. Prior exploration methods are often based on using heuristic auxiliary predictions to guide policy behavior, lacking a mathematically-grounded…
We consider optimal route planning when the objective function is a general nonlinear and non-monotonic function. Such an objective models user behavior more accurately, for example, when a user is risk-averse, or the utility function needs…
Autonomous exploration requires robots to generate informative trajectories iteratively. Although sampling-based methods are highly efficient in unmanned aerial vehicle exploration, many of these methods do not effectively utilize the…
We study the problem of determining an effective exploration strategy in static and non-linear optimization problems, which depend on an unknown scalar parameter to be learned from online collected noisy data. An optimal trade-off between…
Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) is a methodology to solve multi-stage stochastic optimization problems in multi-dimensional discrete or continuous spaces. ADP approximates the optimal value function by adaptively sampling both action…
We study the problem of minimizing the resource capacity of autonomous agents cooperating to achieve a shared task. More specifically, we consider high-level planning for a team of homogeneous agents that operate under resource constraints…
Identifying a preferable route is an important problem that finds applications in map services. When a user plans a trip within a city, the user may want to find "a most popular route such that it passes by shopping mall, restaurant, and…
One of the challenges in online reinforcement learning (RL) is that the agent needs to trade off the exploration of the environment and the exploitation of the samples to optimize its behavior. Whether we optimize for regret, sample…
This paper considers optimal control of dynamical systems which are represented by nonlinear stochastic differential equations. It is well-known that the optimal control policy for this problem can be obtained as a function of a value…
Explorable heap selection is the problem of selecting the $n$th smallest value in a binary heap. The key values can only be accessed by traversing through the underlying infinite binary tree, and the complexity of the algorithm is measured…
We consider problems in which a mobile robot samples an unknown function defined over its operating space, so as to find a global optimum of this function. The path traveled by the robot matters, since it influences energy and time…
Exploration is a crucial and distinctive aspect of reinforcement learning (RL) that remains a fundamental open problem. Several methods have been proposed to tackle this challenge. Commonly used methods inject random noise directly into the…
Bilevel optimization problems, which are problems where two optimization problems are nested, have more and more applications in machine learning. In many practical cases, the upper and the lower objectives correspond to empirical risk…
In reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, exploratory control inputs are used during learning to acquire knowledge for decision making and control, while the true dynamics of a controlled object is unknown. However, this exploring property…
We consider the problem of time-limited robotic exploration in previously unseen environments where exploration is limited by a predefined amount of time. We propose a novel exploration approach using learning-augmented model-based…
In this paper, a novel approach is introduced which utilizes a Rapidly-exploring Random Graph to improve sampling-based autonomous exploration of unknown environments with unmanned ground vehicles compared to the current state of the art.…
Recent advancements in agentic test-time scaling allow models to gather environmental feedback before committing to final actions. A key limitation of existing methods is that they typically employ undifferentiated exploration strategies,…