Paper develops efficient methods for covariance updates and belief space planning.
problem Efficiently updating covariance and evaluating belief space planning in high-dimensional state spaces.
method Novel incremental covariance update technique and factor-graph action tree approach.
result State-of-the-art methods for covariance updates and belief space planning are improved.
This work clarifies the role of inference types in planning.
problem Lack of consistency in using inference types for planning.
method Variational framework and loopy belief propagation.
result All inference types correspond to different weights in variational problems.
Mathematical framework for cooperative communication explains belief transmission.
problem Lack of understanding why cooperation enables effective belief transmission.
method Connection to optimal transport theory, deriving prior models, statistical interpretations, proofs of robustness and instability.
result Cooperative communication provably enables effective, robust belief transmission.
Dyna-style reinforcement learning is a powerful approach for problems where not much real data is available. The main idea is to supplement real trajectories, or sequences of sampled states over time, with simulated ones sampled from a learned model of the environment. However, in large state spaces, the problem of lea…
Reciprocating interactions represent a central feature of all human exchanges. They have been the target of various recent experiments, with healthy participants and psychiatric populations engaging as dyads in multi-round exchanges such as a repeated trust task. Behaviour in such exchanges involves complexities relate…
Unsupervised representation learning has succeeded with excellent results in many applications. It is an especially powerful tool to learn a good representation of environments with partial or noisy observations. In partially observable domains it is important for the representation to encode a belief state, a sufficie…
New method approximates POMDPs with PB-MDPs, providing error bounds and practical algorithms.
problem Difficulty in solving POMDPs with continuous or hybrid state and observation spaces.
method Bounding particle filtering error and adapting MDP algorithms to POMDPs.
result General theory and practical algorithms for POMDPs with no direct dependence on state and observation space sizes.
In Passive POMDPs actions do not affect the world state, but still incur costs. When the agent is bounded by information-processing constraints, it can only keep an approximation of the belief. We present a variational principle for the problem of maintaining the information which is most useful for minimizing the cost…
We address the problem of Bayesian reinforcement learning using efficient model-based online planning. We propose an optimism-free Bayes-adaptive algorithm to induce deeper and sparser exploration with a theoretical bound on its performance relative to the Bayes optimal policy, with a lower computational complexity. Th…
To act and plan in complex environments, we posit that agents should have a mental simulator of the world with three characteristics: (a) it should build an abstract state representing the condition of the world; (b) it should form a belief which represents uncertainty on the world; (c) it should go beyond simple step-…
Unified framework explains retirement and annuitization decisions under age-dependent mortality.
problem Complexity of annuitization decisions due to longevity risk and labor force participation.
method Stochastic control and optimal stopping framework with habit formation and endogenous labor supply.
result Rich sequence of retirement dynamics, including defensive and aggressive labor supply phases.
Bayesian model-based reinforcement learning is a formally elegant approach to learning optimal behaviour under model uncertainty, trading off exploration and exploitation in an ideal way. Unfortunately, finding the resulting Bayes-optimal policies is notoriously taxing, since the search space becomes enormous. In this …
This paper tackles belief-state selection in simulators with latent states.
problem Selecting among approximate belief-state samplers for simulators with latent variables.
method Reduces belief-state selection to conditional distribution selection, develops algorithms and analyses.
result Different formulations of belief-state selection have varying guarantees under different roll-out methods.
Research in reinforcement learning has produced algorithms for optimal decision making under uncertainty that fall within two main types. The first employs a Bayesian framework, where optimality improves with increased computational time. This is because the resulting planning task takes the form of a dynamic programmi…
A framework for navigating environments with spatially correlated obstacles and uncertain blockage status.
problem Navigation in environments with spatially correlated obstacles of uncertain blockage status.
method Modeling spatial correlation with Gaussian Random Field, developing Bayesian belief updates, proposing a two-stage learning framework with offline and online phases.
result Consistent performance gains over baselines in environments with adversarial interruptions or clustered natural hazards.
Novel path planning improves UAV detection of extreme anomalies.
problem Improper criteria for UAV anomaly detection.
method Mathematical criteria guiding UAV towards strong anomalies.
result Proposed approach outperforms traditional methods in various applications.
Meta-agent learns effective exploration from offline data.
problem Design a meta-agent to quickly maximize reward in unseen tasks.
method Bayesian RL approach with adaptive neural belief estimate.
result Meta-agent learns effective exploration behavior from diverse tasks.
Paper introduces a new framework to improve sample efficiency in POMDPs learning.
problem Challenges in off-policy evaluation for POMDPs, especially with hidden states.
method Exploits the metric structure of belief space to relax coverage assumptions.
result Unified analysis technique yields tighter error bounds and sample efficiency improvements.
Proves sufficiency of countable test plans for BV functions on metric spaces.
problem Recovering BV functions and their measures on arbitrary metric spaces.
method Proves sufficiency of countable test plans on arbitrary metric measure spaces and geodesics on CD(K,N) spaces. result Countable test plans are sufficient for BV functions and their measures on metric spaces.
NBF combines deep learning with classical filtering for better belief tracking.
problem Maintaining distributions over hidden states in partially observable systems.
method Trains neural networks to map beliefs to fixed-length vectors, updating them with incoming observations and dynamics.
result NBF efficiently tracks shifting, multimodal beliefs without particle impoverishment.
Complex behaviors are often driven by an internal model, which integrates sensory information over time and facilitates long-term planning. Inferring an agent's internal model is a crucial ingredient in social interactions (theory of mind), for imitation learning, and for interpreting neural activities of behaving agen…
Inferring intent from observed behavior has been studied extensively within the frameworks of Bayesian inverse planning and inverse reinforcement learning. These methods infer a goal or reward function that best explains the actions of the observed agent, typically a human demonstrator. Another agent can use this infer…
FORBES learns flexible belief states for POMDPs using normalizing flows.
problem Accurately modeling belief states in POMDPs for high-dimensional, continuous spaces.
method Integrates normalizing flows into variational inference for continuous belief state learning.
result FORBES learns flexible belief states that enable multi-modal predictions and high-quality reconstructions.
Geodesics in R^n configuration spaces for points apart by epsilon.
problem Finding paths between points in R^n with minimum distance constraints.
method Explicit formulas for geodesics in configuration spaces with Euclidean metric.
result Geodesic motion-planning rules for configuration spaces of ordered pairs of points.
New method combines heuristics and search techniques to speed up cooperative planning for autonomous vehicles.
problem Efficient cooperative planning for autonomous vehicles in complex traffic scenarios.
method Combining learned heuristics with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to guide search towards promising actions.
result Better solutions at lower computational costs achieved through accelerated planning.
A method for eliciting expert beliefs using preferential questions and normalizing flows.
problem Eliciting high-dimensional probability distributions from noisy judgments.
method Normalizing flows based on preferential questions with a novel functional prior.
result The method allows for the inference of arbitrarily flexible densities from preferential judgments.
A planning approach learns skills from interactions, balancing exploration and exploitation.
problem Learning robust high-level skills in noisy environments with unknown pre-conditions.
method Formulates skills as high-level policies, learns plans via bandit problems, balances exploration and exploitation.
result A planner capable of learning robust high-level skills in high-dimensional state spaces.
In this paper we study a notion of topological complexity for the motion planning problem. The topological complexity is a number which measures discontinuity of the process of motion planning in the configuration space X. More precisely, it is the minimal number k such that there are k different motion planning rules,…
Proposes learning latent reward model for planning from rewards.
problem Planning in high-dimensional state spaces with limited reward information.
method Directly learns a latent dynamics model from rewards, planning in latent state-space.
result Successfully learns accurate latent reward prediction model, achieving strong performance and high sample efficiency.
This work tackles long-term visual planning by goal-conditioned hierarchical predictors.
problem Current learning approaches fail on long-horizon tasks due to lack of goal information and coarse-to-fine planning.
method Formulate goal-conditioned predictors (GCPs) and hierarchical models to predict trajectories between observations.
result GCPs enable effective long-term planning with much longer horizons than before.
EBMs improve sample efficiency and generalization in RL.
problem Improving sample efficiency and generalization in reinforcement learning.
method Developed an online algorithm to train EBMs for model-based planning, leveraging their ability to infer intermediate states.
result EBMs lead to significantly better online learning and state space planning compared to feed-forward networks.
PackIt creates a virtual space for testing geometric planning skills.
problem Evaluating geometric planning abilities in virtual environments.
method Developed a virtual environment, PackIt, for geometric planning tasks.
result Demonstrated the effectiveness of various methods for geometric planning.
This work improves AI's ability to solve physical tasks by optimizing world models in abstracted spaces.
problem Developing AI agents capable of solving diverse physical tasks and generalizing to new environments.
method Investigates and optimizes a family of joint-embedding predictive world models (JEPA-WMs) for efficient planning in abstracted spaces.
result Proposes a model that outperforms two established baselines in both navigation and manipulation tasks.
Efficient algorithms for planning in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning with combinatorial action spaces.
problem Planning in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning with a combinatorial action space.
method Efficient algorithms using local access to a simulator and linear function approximation, with improvements for additive feature decomposition and kernelized settings.
result Polynomial compute and query complexity in relevant problem parameters.
POPLIN improves model-based planning in complex environments.
problem Efficient planning in complex high-dimensional environments.
method Combines policy networks with online planning, optimizing parameters directly.
result POPLIN achieves state-of-the-art performance in MuJoCo benchmarks, 3x more sample efficient.
Study motion planning for points avoiding obstacles in a plane.
problem Avoiding collisions for multiple points in a plane with unknown obstacles.
method Algebraic and topological tools for motion planning.
result New topological complexity for planar motion planning.
A framework for cost of belief revision in uncertain agents.
problem Cost of revising beliefs in uncertain agents.
method Axiomatic framework for transport-based belief costs, postulates P0 and P1.
result Cost metric is conformally reweighted by Fisher information, leading to a cost floor diverging at certainty.
This paper presents a unifying framework for reinforcement learning and planning.
problem Sequential decision making in AI, formalized as MDP optimization.
method A unifying algorithmic framework (FRAP) for reinforcement learning and planning.
result Identifies common dimensions in MDP planning and learning algorithms.
Humans are capable of attributing latent mental contents such as beliefs or intentions to others. The social skill is critical in daily life for reasoning about the potential consequences of others' behaviors so as to plan ahead. It is known that humans use such reasoning ability recursively by considering what others …
We aim to reduce the burden of programming and deploying autonomous systems to work in concert with people in time-critical domains, such as military field operations and disaster response. Deployment plans for these operations are frequently negotiated on-the-fly by teams of human planners. A human operator then trans…
In the modern healthcare system, rapidly expanding costs/complexity, the growing myriad of treatment options, and exploding information streams that often do not effectively reach the front lines hinder the ability to choose optimal treatment decisions over time. The goal in this paper is to develop a general purpose (…
Selective planning with imperfect models reduces harmful effects of model inadequacy.
problem Harmful effects of using an imperfect model in reinforcement learning.
method Selective planning with heteroscedastic regression to estimate predictive uncertainty from model inadequacy.
result Effective selective planning requires considering both parameter uncertainty and model inadequacy.
We give an alternative proof for the fact that in n-dimensional Alexandrov spaces with curvature bounded below there exists a unique optimal transport plan from any purely (n−1)-unrectifiable starting measure, and that this plan is induced by an optimal map.
Generalized belief propagation converges to optimal solutions on graphs with motifs.
problem Understanding belief propagation on loopy graphs.
method Study of generalized belief propagation on graphs with motifs.
result Generalized belief propagation converges to the global optimum of the Bethe free energy.
A key challenge in complex visuomotor control is learning abstract representations that are effective for specifying goals, planning, and generalization. To this end, we introduce universal planning networks (UPN). UPNs embed differentiable planning within a goal-directed policy. This planning computation unrolls a for…
Study risk sharing with Lambda VaR under diverse beliefs.
problem Risk sharing among agents with different beliefs.
method Use Lambda Value-at-Risk as preference, analyze under heterogeneous beliefs.
result Explicit formulas for risk sharing under various belief scenarios.
We demonstrate the use of conditional autoregressive generative models (van den Oord et al., 2016a) over a discrete latent space (van den Oord et al., 2017b) for forward planning with MCTS. In order to test this method, we introduce a new environment featuring varying difficulty levels, along with moving goals and obst…
Unified kernel for prediction markets reduces belief variance forecast error.
problem Lack of standardized tools for quoting and hedging belief risk in prediction markets.
method Logit jump-diffusion model with risk-neutral drift, calibration pipeline, and coherent derivative layer.
result Model reduces forecast error compared to diffusion-only and probability-space baselines.