Related papers: Consensus-based optimization for closed-box advers…

In this paper, we present a novel consensus-based zeroth-order algorithm tailored for non-convex multiplayer games. The proposed method leverages a metaheuristic approach using concepts from swarm intelligence to reliably identify global…

We explore the use of Evolution Strategies (ES), a class of black box optimization algorithms, as an alternative to popular MDP-based RL techniques such as Q-learning and Policy Gradients. Experiments on MuJoCo and Atari show that ES is a…

Black box discrete optimization (BBDO) appears in wide range of engineering tasks. Evolutionary or other BBDO approaches have been applied, aiming at automating necessary tuning of system parameters, such as hyper parameter tuning of…

Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a widely used approach for blackbox optimization that leverages a Gaussian process (GP) model and an acquisition function to guide future sampling. While effective in low-dimensional settings, BO faces…

This paper is concerned with the large particle limit for the consensus-based optimization (CBO), which was postulated in the pioneering works [6,28]. In order to solve this open problem, we adapt a compactness argument by first proving the…

Neural network ensembles have been studied extensively in the context of adversarial robustness and most ensemble-based approaches remain vulnerable to adaptive attacks. In this paper, we investigate the robustness of Error-Correcting…

Bayesian optimization is a popular black-box optimization method for parameter learning in control and robotics. It typically requires an objective function that reflects the user's optimization goal. However, in practical applications,…

In the past few years, Online Convex Optimization (OCO) has received notable attention in the control literature thanks to its flexible real-time nature and powerful performance guarantees. In this paper, we propose new step-size rules and…

When gradient-based methods are impractical, black-box optimization (BBO) provides a valuable alternative. However, BBO often struggles with high-dimensional problems and limited trial budgets. In this work, we propose a novel approach…

We focus on the problem of black-box adversarial attacks, where the aim is to generate adversarial examples for deep learning models solely based on information limited to output label~(hard label) to a queried data input. We propose a…

Central Force Optimization (CFO) is a new nature-inspired deterministic multi-dimensional search and optimization metaheuristic based on the metaphor of gravitational kinematics. CFO is applied to the PBM antenna benchmark suite and the…

Constraint handling plays a key role in solving realistic complex optimization problems. Though intensively discussed in the last few decades, existing constraint handling techniques predominantly rely on human experts' designs, which more…

A well-studied generalization of the standard online convex optimization (OCO) framework is constrained online convex optimization (COCO). In COCO, on every round, a convex cost function and a convex constraint function are revealed to the…

We study the problem of preferential Bayesian optimization (BO), where we aim to optimize a black-box function with only preference feedback over a pair of candidate solutions. Inspired by the likelihood ratio idea, we construct a…

This paper considers Bayesian optimization (BO) for problems with known outer problem structure. In contrast to the classic BO setting, where the objective function itself is unknown and needs to be iteratively estimated from noisy…

Local Bayesian optimization is a promising practical approach to solve the high dimensional black-box function optimization problem. Among them is the approximated gradient class of methods, which implements a strategy similar to gradient…

Many practitioners who use the EM algorithm complain that it is sometimes slow. When does this happen, and what can be done about it? In this paper, we study the general class of bound optimization algorithms - including…

Evolutionary strategies have recently been shown to achieve competing levels of performance for complex optimization problems in reinforcement learning. In such problems, one often needs to optimize an objective function subject to a set of…

Gradient-based methods are often used for policy optimization in deep reinforcement learning, despite being vulnerable to local optima and saddle points. Although gradient-free methods (e.g., genetic algorithms or evolution strategies) help…

We propose constrained causal Bayesian optimization (cCBO), an approach for finding interventions in a known causal graph that optimize a target variable under some constraints. cCBO first reduces the search space by exploiting the graph…