Download or read book Rollout Policy Iteration and Distributed Reinforcement Learning written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to develop in greater depth some of the methods from the author's Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control recently published textbook (Athena Scientific, 2019). In particular, we present new research, relating to systems involving multiple agents, partitioned architectures, and distributed asynchronous computation. We pay special attention to the contexts of dynamic programming/policy iteration and control theory/model predictive control. We also discuss in some detail the application of the methodology to challenging discrete/combinatorial optimization problems, such as routing, scheduling, assignment, and mixed integer programming, including the use of neural network approximations within these contexts. The book focuses on the fundamental idea of policy iteration, i.e., start from some policy, and successively generate one or more improved policies. If just one improved policy is generated, this is called rollout, which, based on broad and consistent computational experience, appears to be one of the most versatile and reliable of all reinforcement learning methods. In this book, rollout algorithms are developed for both discrete deterministic and stochastic DP problems, and the development of distributed implementations in both multiagent and multiprocessor settings, aiming to take advantage of parallelism. Approximate policy iteration is more ambitious than rollout, but it is a strictly off-line method, and it is generally far more computationally intensive. This motivates the use of parallel and distributed computation. One of the purposes of the monograph is to discuss distributed (possibly asynchronous) methods that relate to rollout and policy iteration, both in the context of an exact and an approximate implementation involving neural networks or other approximation architectures. Much of the new research is inspired by the remarkable AlphaZero chess program, where policy iteration, value and policy networks, approximate lookahead minimization, and parallel computation all play an important role.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning and Dynamic Programming Using Function Approximators written by Lucian Busoniu and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From household appliances to applications in robotics, engineered systems involving complex dynamics can only be as effective as the algorithms that control them. While Dynamic Programming (DP) has provided researchers with a way to optimally solve decision and control problems involving complex dynamic systems, its practical value was limited by algorithms that lacked the capacity to scale up to realistic problems. However, in recent years, dramatic developments in Reinforcement Learning (RL), the model-free counterpart of DP, changed our understanding of what is possible. Those developments led to the creation of reliable methods that can be applied even when a mathematical model of the system is unavailable, allowing researchers to solve challenging control problems in engineering, as well as in a variety of other disciplines, including economics, medicine, and artificial intelligence. Reinforcement Learning and Dynamic Programming Using Function Approximators provides a comprehensive and unparalleled exploration of the field of RL and DP. With a focus on continuous-variable problems, this seminal text details essential developments that have substantially altered the field over the past decade. In its pages, pioneering experts provide a concise introduction to classical RL and DP, followed by an extensive presentation of the state-of-the-art and novel methods in RL and DP with approximation. Combining algorithm development with theoretical guarantees, they elaborate on their work with illustrative examples and insightful comparisons. Three individual chapters are dedicated to representative algorithms from each of the major classes of techniques: value iteration, policy iteration, and policy search. The features and performance of these algorithms are highlighted in extensive experimental studies on a range of control applications. The recent development of applications involving complex systems has led to a surge of interest in RL and DP methods and the subsequent need for a quality resource on the subject. For graduate students and others new to the field, this book offers a thorough introduction to both the basics and emerging methods. And for those researchers and practitioners working in the fields of optimal and adaptive control, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and operations research, this resource offers a combination of practical algorithms, theoretical analysis, and comprehensive examples that they will be able to adapt and apply to their own work. Access the authors' website at www.dcsc.tudelft.nl/rlbook/ for additional material, including computer code used in the studies and information concerning new developments.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning second edition written by Richard S. Sutton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.

Download or read book Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning written by Csaba Grossi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinforcement learning is a learning paradigm concerned with learning to control a system so as to maximize a numerical performance measure that expresses a long-term objective. What distinguishes reinforcement learning from supervised learning is that only partial feedback is given to the learner about the learner's predictions. Further, the predictions may have long term effects through influencing the future state of the controlled system. Thus, time plays a special role. The goal in reinforcement learning is to develop efficient learning algorithms, as well as to understand the algorithms' merits and limitations. Reinforcement learning is of great interest because of the large number of practical applications that it can be used to address, ranging from problems in artificial intelligence to operations research or control engineering. In this book, we focus on those algorithms of reinforcement learning that build on the powerful theory of dynamic programming. We give a fairly comprehensive catalog of learning problems, describe the core ideas, note a large number of state of the art algorithms, followed by the discussion of their theoretical properties and limitations. Table of Contents: Markov Decision Processes / Value Prediction Problems / Control / For Further Exploration

Download or read book Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands On written by Maxim Lapan and published by Packt Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical guide will teach you how deep learning (DL) can be used to solve complex real-world problems. Key Features Explore deep reinforcement learning (RL), from the first principles to the latest algorithms Evaluate high-profile RL methods, including value iteration, deep Q-networks, policy gradients, TRPO, PPO, DDPG, D4PG, evolution strategies and genetic algorithms Keep up with the very latest industry developments, including AI-driven chatbots Book Description Recent developments in reinforcement learning (RL), combined with deep learning (DL), have seen unprecedented progress made towards training agents to solve complex problems in a human-like way. Google’s use of algorithms to play and defeat the well-known Atari arcade games has propelled the field to prominence, and researchers are generating new ideas at a rapid pace. Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On is a comprehensive guide to the very latest DL tools and their limitations. You will evaluate methods including Cross-entropy and policy gradients, before applying them to real-world environments. Take on both the Atari set of virtual games and family favorites such as Connect4. The book provides an introduction to the basics of RL, giving you the know-how to code intelligent learning agents to take on a formidable array of practical tasks. Discover how to implement Q-learning on ‘grid world’ environments, teach your agent to buy and trade stocks, and find out how natural language models are driving the boom in chatbots. What you will learn Understand the DL context of RL and implement complex DL models Learn the foundation of RL: Markov decision processes Evaluate RL methods including Cross-entropy, DQN, Actor-Critic, TRPO, PPO, DDPG, D4PG and others Discover how to deal with discrete and continuous action spaces in various environments Defeat Atari arcade games using the value iteration method Create your own OpenAI Gym environment to train a stock trading agent Teach your agent to play Connect4 using AlphaGo Zero Explore the very latest deep RL research on topics including AI-driven chatbots Who this book is for Some fluency in Python is assumed. Basic deep learning (DL) approaches should be familiar to readers and some practical experience in DL will be helpful. This book is an introduction to deep reinforcement learning (RL) and requires no background in RL.

Download or read book Markov Decision Processes in Practice written by Richard J. Boucherie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-10 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents classical Markov Decision Processes (MDP) for real-life applications and optimization. MDP allows users to develop and formally support approximate and simple decision rules, and this book showcases state-of-the-art applications in which MDP was key to the solution approach. The book is divided into six parts. Part 1 is devoted to the state-of-the-art theoretical foundation of MDP, including approximate methods such as policy improvement, successive approximation and infinite state spaces as well as an instructive chapter on Approximate Dynamic Programming. It then continues with five parts of specific and non-exhaustive application areas. Part 2 covers MDP healthcare applications, which includes different screening procedures, appointment scheduling, ambulance scheduling and blood management. Part 3 explores MDP modeling within transportation. This ranges from public to private transportation, from airports and traffic lights to car parking or charging your electric car . Part 4 contains three chapters that illustrates the structure of approximate policies for production or manufacturing structures. In Part 5, communications is highlighted as an important application area for MDP. It includes Gittins indices, down-to-earth call centers and wireless sensor networks. Finally Part 6 is dedicated to financial modeling, offering an instructive review to account for financial portfolios and derivatives under proportional transactional costs. The MDP applications in this book illustrate a variety of both standard and non-standard aspects of MDP modeling and its practical use. This book should appeal to readers for practitioning, academic research and educational purposes, with a background in, among others, operations research, mathematics, computer science, and industrial engineering.

Download or read book Least Squares Policy Iteration with Instrumental Variables Vs Direct Policy Search written by Somayeh Moazeni and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies approximate policy iteration (API) methods which use least-squares Bellman error minimization for policy evaluation. We address several of its enhancements, namely, Bellman error minimization with instrumental variables, projected Bellman error minimization, and projected Bellman error minimization with instrumental variables. For a general discrete-time stochastic control problem, Bellman error minimization policy evaluation using instrumental variables is equivalent to both variants of projected Bellman error minimization. An alternative to these API methods is direct policy search based on knowledge gradient. The practical performance of these three approximate dynamic programming methods are investigated in the context of an application in energy storage, integrated with an intermittent wind energy supply to fully serve a stochastic time-varying electricity demand. We create a library of test problems using real-world data and apply value iteration to find their optimal policies. These benchmarks are then used to compare the developed policies. Our analysis indicates that API with instrumental variables Bellman error minimization prominently outperforms API with least-squares Bellman error minimization. However, these approaches underperform our direct policy search implementation.

Download or read book Regularized Approximate Policy Iteration using kernel for on line Reinforcement Learning written by Gennaro Esposito, PhD and published by gennaro esposito. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Approximate Dynamic Programming written by Warren B. Powell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-10-05 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete and accessible introduction to the real-world applications of approximate dynamic programming With the growing levels of sophistication in modern-day operations, it is vital for practitioners to understand how to approach, model, and solve complex industrial problems. Approximate Dynamic Programming is a result of the author's decades of experience working in large industrial settings to develop practical and high-quality solutions to problems that involve making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. This groundbreaking book uniquely integrates four distinct disciplines—Markov design processes, mathematical programming, simulation, and statistics—to demonstrate how to successfully model and solve a wide range of real-life problems using the techniques of approximate dynamic programming (ADP). The reader is introduced to the three curses of dimensionality that impact complex problems and is also shown how the post-decision state variable allows for the use of classical algorithmic strategies from operations research to treat complex stochastic optimization problems. Designed as an introduction and assuming no prior training in dynamic programming of any form, Approximate Dynamic Programming contains dozens of algorithms that are intended to serve as a starting point in the design of practical solutions for real problems. The book provides detailed coverage of implementation challenges including: modeling complex sequential decision processes under uncertainty, identifying robust policies, designing and estimating value function approximations, choosing effective stepsize rules, and resolving convergence issues. With a focus on modeling and algorithms in conjunction with the language of mainstream operations research, artificial intelligence, and control theory, Approximate Dynamic Programming: Models complex, high-dimensional problems in a natural and practical way, which draws on years of industrial projects Introduces and emphasizes the power of estimating a value function around the post-decision state, allowing solution algorithms to be broken down into three fundamental steps: classical simulation, classical optimization, and classical statistics Presents a thorough discussion of recursive estimation, including fundamental theory and a number of issues that arise in the development of practical algorithms Offers a variety of methods for approximating dynamic programs that have appeared in previous literature, but that have never been presented in the coherent format of a book Motivated by examples from modern-day operations research, Approximate Dynamic Programming is an accessible introduction to dynamic modeling and is also a valuable guide for the development of high-quality solutions to problems that exist in operations research and engineering. The clear and precise presentation of the material makes this an appropriate text for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, while also serving as a reference for researchers and practitioners. A companion Web site is available for readers, which includes additional exercises, solutions to exercises, and data sets to reinforce the book's main concepts.

Download or read book Markov Decision Processes written by Martin L. Puterman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. "This text is unique in bringing together so many results hitherto found only in part in other texts and papers. . . . The text is fairly self-contained, inclusive of some basic mathematical results needed, and provides a rich diet of examples, applications, and exercises. The bibliographical material at the end of each chapter is excellent, not only from a historical perspective, but because it is valuable for researchers in acquiring a good perspective of the MDP research potential." —Zentralblatt fur Mathematik ". . . it is of great value to advanced-level students, researchers, and professional practitioners of this field to have now a complete volume (with more than 600 pages) devoted to this topic. . . . Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming represents an up-to-date, unified, and rigorous treatment of theoretical and computational aspects of discrete-time Markov decision processes." —Journal of the American Statistical Association

Download or read book Adaptive Dynamic Programming Single and Multiple Controllers written by Ruizhuo Song and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a class of novel optimal control methods and games schemes based on adaptive dynamic programming techniques. For systems with one control input, the ADP-based optimal control is designed for different objectives, while for systems with multi-players, the optimal control inputs are proposed based on games. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods, the book analyzes the properties of the adaptive dynamic programming methods, including convergence of the iterative value functions and the stability of the system under the iterative control laws. Further, to substantiate the mathematical analysis, it presents various application examples, which provide reference to real-world practices.

Download or read book Adaptive Treatment Strategies in Practice Planning Trials and Analyzing Data for Personalized Medicine written by Michael R. Kosorok and published by SIAM. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personalized medicine is a medical paradigm that emphasizes systematic use of individual patient information to optimize that patient's health care, particularly in managing chronic conditions and treating cancer. In the statistical literature, sequential decision making is known as an adaptive treatment strategy (ATS) or a dynamic treatment regime (DTR). The field of DTRs emerges at the interface of statistics, machine learning, and biomedical science to provide a data-driven framework for precision medicine. The authors provide a learning-by-seeing approach to the development of ATSs, aimed at a broad audience of health researchers. All estimation procedures used are described in sufficient heuristic and technical detail so that less quantitative readers can understand the broad principles underlying the approaches. At the same time, more quantitative readers can implement these practices. This book provides the most up-to-date summary of the current state of the statistical research in personalized medicine; contains chapters by leaders in the area from both the statistics and computer sciences fields; and also contains a range of practical advice, introductory and expository materials, and case studies.

Download or read book Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XVI written by Wolfgang Banzhaf and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-23 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These contributions, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of Genetic Programming (GP), explore the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. Topics in this volume include: evolving developmental programs for neural networks solving multiple problems, tangled program, transfer learning and outlier detection using GP, program search for machine learning pipelines in reinforcement learning, automatic programming with GP, new variants of GP, like SignalGP, variants of lexicase selection, and symbolic regression and classification techniques. The volume includes several chapters on best practices and lessons learned from hands-on experience. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

Download or read book Partially Observed Markov Decision Processes written by Vikram Krishnamurthy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers formulation, algorithms, and structural results of partially observed Markov decision processes, whilst linking theory to real-world applications in controlled sensing. Computations are kept to a minimum, enabling students and researchers in engineering, operations research, and economics to understand the methods and determine the structure of their optimal solution.

Download or read book Constrained Markov Decision Processes written by Eitan Altman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unified approach for the study of constrained Markov decision processes with a finite state space and unbounded costs. Unlike the single controller case considered in many other books, the author considers a single controller with several objectives, such as minimizing delays and loss, probabilities, and maximization of throughputs. It is desirable to design a controller that minimizes one cost objective, subject to inequality constraints on other cost objectives. This framework describes dynamic decision problems arising frequently in many engineering fields. A thorough overview of these applications is presented in the introduction. The book is then divided into three sections that build upon each other.

Download or read book Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Theory and Practice written by Yanwen Wu and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 982 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume includes a set of selected papers extended and revised from the I2009 Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering (KESE 2009) was held on December 19~ 20, 2009, Shenzhen, China. Volume 2 is to provide a forum for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of Knowledge Engineering and Communication Technology to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the future research directions of these fields. 135 high-quality papers are included in the volume. Each paper has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 program committee members and selected by the volume editor Prof.Yanwen Wu. On behalf of the this volume, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of authors and referees for their efforts reviewing the papers. Hoping you can find lots of profound research ideas and results on the related fields of Knowledge Engineering and Communication Technology.

Download or read book Heuristic Search written by Stefan Edelkamp and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Search has been vital to artificial intelligence from the very beginning as a core technique in problem solving. The authors present a thorough overview of heuristic search with a balance of discussion between theoretical analysis and efficient implementation and application to real-world problems. Current developments in search such as pattern databases and search with efficient use of external memory and parallel processing units on main boards and graphics cards are detailed. Heuristic search as a problem solving tool is demonstrated in applications for puzzle solving, game playing, constraint satisfaction and machine learning. While no previous familiarity with heuristic search is necessary the reader should have a basic knowledge of algorithms, data structures, and calculus. Real-world case studies and chapter ending exercises help to create a full and realized picture of how search fits into the world of artificial intelligence and the one around us. Provides real-world success stories and case studies for heuristic search algorithms Includes many AI developments not yet covered in textbooks such as pattern databases, symbolic search, and parallel processing units