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The proximal bundle method (PBM) is a fundamental and computationally effective algorithm for solving nonsmooth optimization problems. In this paper, we present the first variant of the PBM for smooth objectives, achieving an accelerated…

In recent years several learning approaches to point goal navigation in previously unseen environments have been proposed. They vary in the representations of the environments, problem decomposition, and experimental evaluation. In this…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular approach for expensive black-box optimization, with applications including parameter tuning, experimental design, robotics. BO usually models the objective function by a Gaussian process (GP), and…

Achieving the full promise of the Thermodynamic Variational Objective (TVO), a recently proposed variational lower bound on the log evidence involving a one-dimensional Riemann integral approximation, requires choosing a "schedule" of…

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) allow to compute reliable solutions for dynamic decision problems whose evolution is modeled by rewards and partially-known transition probabilities. Unfortunately, accounting for uncertainty in the…

Strategic mine production scheduling under geological uncertainty is conventionally formulated as a stochastic optimization problem in which a fixed extraction sequence and routing decisions are computed ex ante. This plan-driven paradigm…

Possibilistic and qualitative POMDPs (pi-POMDPs) are counterparts of POMDPs used to model situations where the agent's initial belief or observation probabilities are imprecise due to lack of past experiences or insufficient data…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a general mathematical model for sequential decision-making in stochastic environments under state uncertainty. POMDPs are often solved \textit{online}, which enables the algorithm…

We consider the problem: is the optimal expected total reward to reach a goal state in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) below a given threshold? We tackle this -- generally undecidable -- problem by computing…

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide a principled mathematical framework for decision-making under uncertainty. However, the exact solution to POMDPs is computationally intractable. In this paper, we address the…

Planning under uncertainty is critical to robotics. The Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) is a mathematical framework for such planning problems. It is powerful due to its careful quantification of the non-deterministic…

Computing reachability probabilities is at the heart of probabilistic model checking. All model checkers compute these probabilities in an iterative fashion using value iteration. This technique approximates a fixed point from below by…

Planning robust executions under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge for building autonomous robots. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide a standard framework for modeling uncertainty in many applications. In…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a central model for uncertainty in sequential decision making. The most basic objective is the reachability objective, where a target set must be eventually visited, and the more…

Bayesian optimization (BO) has become popular for sequential optimization of black-box functions. When BO is used to optimize a target function, we often have access to previous evaluations of potentially related functions. This begs the…

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a general framework for sequential decision-making under latent state uncertainty, yet learning in POMDPs is intractable in the worst case. Motivated by sensing and probing…

Modified policy iteration (MPI) is a dynamic programming algorithm that combines elements of policy iteration and value iteration. The convergence of MPI has been well studied in the context of discounted and average-cost MDPs. In this…

Complex computer codes or models can often be run in a hierarchy of different levels of complexity ranging from the very basic to the sophisticated. The top levels in this hierarchy are typically expensive to run, which limits the number of…

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and positive integer costs associated with every transition. The traditional optimization objective (stochastic shortest path) asks to minimize…

This paper proposes a novel framework for implicit multi-camera system calibration utilizing Gaussian Process (GP) regression. Conventional explicit calibration methods are constrained by rigid mathematical models and struggle with complex,…