Type-WA*: Using Exploration in Bounded Suboptimal Planning

Previous work on satisficing planning using greedy best-first search (GBFS) has shown that non-greedy, randomized exploration can help escape uninformative heuristic regions and solve hard problems faster. Despite their success when used with GBFS, such exploration techniques cannot be directly applied to bounded suboptimal algorithms like Weighted A* (WA*) without losing the solution-quality guarantees. In this work, we present Type-WA*, a novel bounded suboptimal planning algorithm that augments WA* with type-based exploration while still satisfying WA*'s theoretical solution-quality guarantee. Our empirical analysis shows that Type-WA* significantly increases the number of solved problems, when used in conjunction with each of three popular heuristics. Our analysis also provides insight into the runtime vs. solution cost trade-off.

Anytime Multi-Agent Path Finding via Large Neighborhood Search

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) is the challenging problem of computing collision-free paths for multiple agents. Algorithms for solving MAPF can be categorized on a spectrum. At one end are (bounded-sub)optimal algorithms that can find high-quality solutions for small problems. At the other end are unbounded-suboptimal algorithms that can solve large problems but usually find low-quality solutions. In this paper, we consider a third approach that combines the best of both worlds: anytime algorithms that quickly find an initial solution using efficient MAPF algorithms from the literature, even for large problems, and that subsequently improve the solution quality to near-optimal as time progresses by replanning subgroups of agents using Large Neighborhood Search. We compare our algorithm MAPF-LNS against a range of existing work and report significant gains in scalability, runtime to the initial solution, and speed of improving the solution.

An Efficient Riemannian Gradient based Algorithm for Max-Cut Problems

<p>The max-cut problem addresses the problem of finding a cut for a graph that splits the graph into two subsets of vertices so that the number of edges between these two subsets is as large as possible. However, this problem is NP-Hard, which may be solved by suboptimal algorithms. In this paper, we propose a fast and accurate Riemannian optimization algorithm for solving the max-cut problem. To do so, we develop a gradient descent algorithm and prove its convergence. Our simulation results show that the proposed method is extremely efficient on some already-investigated graphs. Specifically, our method is on average 50 times faster than the best well-known techniques with slightly losing the performance, which is on average 0.9729 of the max-cut value of the others.</p> <p></p>

An Efficient Riemannian Gradient based Algorithm for Max-Cut Problems

<p>The max-cut problem addresses the problem of finding a cut for a graph that splits the graph into two subsets of vertices so that the number of edges between these two subsets is as large as possible. However, this problem is NP-Hard, which may be solved by suboptimal algorithms. In this paper, we propose a fast and accurate Riemannian optimization algorithm for solving the max-cut problem. To do so, we develop a gradient descent algorithm and prove its convergence. Our simulation results show that the proposed method is extremely efficient on some already-investigated graphs. Specifically, our method is on average 50 times faster than the best well-known techniques with slightly losing the performance, which is on average 0.9729 of the max-cut value of the others.</p> <p></p>

Performance Criteria for the Identification of Inertial Sensor Error Models

This paper considers performance criteria for the identification of sensor error models and the procedure for their calculation. These criteria are used to investigate the efficiency of the identification problem solution, depending on the initial data, and to carry out a comparative analysis of various suboptimal algorithms. The calculation procedure is based on an algorithm that solves the joint problem of hypothesis recognition and parameter estimation within the Bayesian approach. A performance analysis of the models traditionally used to describe errors of inertial sensors is given to illustrate the application of the procedure for the calculation of performance criteria.