Utility-Based On-Line Exploration for Repeated Navigation in an Embedded Graph

In this paper, we address the tradeo between exploration and exploitation for agents which need to learn more about the structure of their environment in order to perform more e ectively. For example, a robot may need to learn the most e cient routes between important sites in its environment. We compare on-line and o -line exploration for a repeated task, where the agent is given some particular task to perform some number of times. Tasks are modeled as navigation on a graph embedded in the plane. This paper describes a utility-based on-line exploration algorithm for repeated tasks, which takes into account both the costs and potential bene ts (over future task repetitions) of di erent exploratory actions. Exploration is performed in a greedy fashion, with the locally optimal exploratory action performed on each task repetition. We experimentally evaluated our utility-based on-line algorithm against a heuristic search algorithm for o -line exploration as well as a randomized on-line ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: AI
• Authors: Shlomo Argamon-Engelson, Sarit Kraus, Sigalit Sina
• Keywords: AI 1998, Artificial Intelligence, Exploration, Task Repetitions, Utility-based On-line Exploration