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In real-time systems optimization, designers often face a challenging problem posed by the non-convex and non-continuous schedulability conditions, which may even lack an analytical form to understand their properties. To tackle this…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-20 Sen Wang , Dong Li , Shao-Yu Huang , Xuanliang Deng , Ashrarul H. Sifat , Changhee Jung , Ryan Williams , Haibo Zeng

The work explores a specific scenario for structural computational optimization based on the following elements: (a) a relaxed optimization setting considering the ersatz (bi-material) approximation, (b) a treatment based on a nonsmoothed…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2021-08-06 J. Oliver , D. Yago , J. Cante , O. Lloberas-Valls

Black-box model-based optimization (MBO) problems, where the goal is to find a design input that maximizes an unknown objective function, are ubiquitous in a wide range of domains, such as the design of proteins, DNA sequences, aircraft,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-18 Brandon Trabucco , Xinyang Geng , Aviral Kumar , Sergey Levine

The types of constraints encountered in black-box and simulation-based optimization problems differ significantly from those treated in nonlinear programming. We introduce a characterization of constraints to address this situation. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-06-01 Sébastien Le Digabel , Stefan M. Wild

Many planning applications involve complex relationships defined on high-dimensional, continuous variables. For example, robotic manipulation requires planning with kinematic, collision, visibility, and motion constraints involving robot…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Caelan Reed Garrett , Tomás Lozano-Pérez , Leslie Pack Kaelbling

The paper presents a topology optimization approach that designs an optimal structure, called a self-supporting structure, which is ready to be fabricated via additive manufacturing without the usage of additional support structures. Such…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2017-08-25 Dengyang Zhao , Ming Li , Yusheng Liu

Bayesian optimization is used in many areas of AI for the optimization of black-box processes and has achieved impressive improvements of the state of the art for a lot of applications. It intelligently explores large and complex design…

Materials Science · Physics 2021-08-03 Lars Kotthoff , Hud Wahab , Patrick Johnson

Recently there has been a surge of interest in operations research (OR) and the machine learning (ML) community in combining prediction algorithms and optimization techniques to solve decision-making problems in the face of uncertainty.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Utsav Sadana , Abhilash Chenreddy , Erick Delage , Alexandre Forel , Emma Frejinger , Thibaut Vidal

Analog and mixed-signal circuit design remains challenging due to the shortage of high-quality data and the difficulty of embedding domain knowledge into automated flows. Traditional black-box optimization achieves sampling efficiency but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Ziming Wei , Zichen Kong , Yuan Wang , David Z. Pan , Xiyuan Tang

Chip placement is a vital stage in modern chip design as it has a substantial impact on the subsequent processes and the overall quality of the final chip. The use of black-box optimization (BBO) for chip placement has a history of several…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Ke Xue , Ruo-Tong Chen , Rong-Xi Tan , Xi Lin , Yunqi Shi , Siyuan Xu , Mingxuan Yuan , Chao Qian

Optimization is an essential component for solving problems in wide-ranging fields. Ideally, the objective function should be designed such that the solution is unique and the optimization problem can be solved stably. However, the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-07-27 Takayuki Osa

Bilevel optimization is a field of significant theoretical and practical interest, yet solving such optimization problems remains challenging. Evolutionary methods have been employed to address these problems in the black-box setting;…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Marc Ong , Youhei Akimoto

Manifold optimization is ubiquitous in computational and applied mathematics, statistics, engineering, machine learning, physics, chemistry and etc. One of the main challenges usually is the non-convexity of the manifold constraints. By…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-14 Jiang Hu , Xin Liu , Zaiwen Wen , Yaxiang Yuan

Topology optimization is a widely used design method that produces optimized material distributions for prescribed objectives and constraints through well-established numerical algorithms. Throughout the workflow, engineers make a series of…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Hyunjee Park , Hayoung Chung

The encoding of solutions in black-box optimization is a delicate, handcrafted balance between expressiveness and domain knowledge -- between exploring a wide variety of solutions, and ensuring that those solutions are useful. Our main…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-07-07 Adam Gaier , Alexander Asteroth , Jean-Baptiste Mouret

Recommender systems, while a powerful decision making tool, are often operationalized as black box models, such that their AI algorithms are not accessible or interpretable by human operators. This in turn can cause confusion and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2024-09-18 Divya Srivastava , Karen M. Feigh

Black-box complexity is a complexity theoretic measure for how difficult a problem is to be optimized by a general purpose optimization algorithm. It is thus one of the few means trying to understand which problems are tractable for genetic…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Benjamin Doerr , Timo Kötzing , Johannes Lengler , Carola Winzen

In this paper, we study the predict-then-optimize problem where the output of a machine learning prediction task is used as the input of some downstream optimization problem, say, the objective coefficient vector of a linear program. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-30 Chunlin Sun , Shang Liu , Xiaocheng Li

In blackbox optimization, evaluation of the objective and constraint functions is time consuming. In some situations, constraint values may be evaluated independently or sequentially. The present work proposes and compares two strategies to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-30 Stéphane Alarie , Charles Audet , Paulin Jacquot , Sébastien Le Digabel

Optimization is a critical tool for addressing a broad range of human and technical problems. However, the paradox of advanced optimization techniques is that they have maximum utility for problems in which the relationship between the…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2024-03-04 Hazhir Aliahmadi , Ruben Perez , Greg van Anders