Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a recently proposed search method that combines the precision of tree search with the generality of random sampling. It has received considerable interest due to its spectacular success in the difficult problem of computer Go, but has also proved beneficial in a range of other domains. This paper is a survey of the literature to date, intended to provide a snapshot of the state of the art after the first five years of MCTS research. We outline the core algorithm's derivation, impart some structure on the many variations and enhancements that have been proposed, and summarize the results from the key game and nongame domains to which MCTS methods have been applied. A number of open research questions indicate that the field is ripe for future work.

/pdf/a-survey-of-monte-carlo-tree-search-methods-2mj9olkdni.pdf

A Survey of Monte Carlo Tree Search Methods

Reinforcement learning aims to determine an optimal control policy from interaction with a system or from observations gathered from a system. In batch mode, it can be achieved by approximating the so-called Q-function based on a set of four-tuples (xt, ut , rt, xt+1) where xt denotes the system state at time t, ut the control action taken, rt the instantaneous reward obtained and xt+1 the successor state of the system, and by determining the control policy from this Q-function. The Q-function approximation may be obtained from the limit of a sequence of (batch mode) supervised learning problems. Within this framework we describe the use of several classical tree-based supervised learning methods (CART, Kd-tree, tree bagging) and two newly proposed ensemble algorithms, namely extremely and totally randomized trees. We study their performances on several examples and find that the ensemble methods based on regression trees perform well in extracting relevant information about the optimal control policy from sets of four-tuples. In particular, the totally randomized trees give good results while ensuring the convergence of the sequence, whereas by relaxing the convergence constraint even better accuracy results are provided by the extremely randomized trees.

/pdf/tree-based-batch-mode-reinforcement-learning-n6hl80m1gk.pdf

Tree-Based Batch Mode Reinforcement Learning

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) has existed as a subfield of AI for less than two decades. DAI is concerned with systems that consist of multiple independent entities that interact in a domain. Traditionally, DAI has been divided into two sub-disciplines: Distributed Problem Solving (DPS) focuses on the information management aspects of systems with several components working together towards a common goals Multiagent Systems (MAS) deals with behavior management in collections of several independent entities, or agents. This survey of MAS is intended to serve as an introduction to the field and as an organizational framework. A series of general multiagent scenarios are presented. For each scenario, the issues that arise are described along with a sampling of the techniques that exist to deal with them. The presented techniques are not exhaustive, but they highlight how multiagent systems can be and have been used to build complex systems. When options exist, the techniques presented are biased towards machine learning approaches. Additional opportunities for applying machine learning to MAS are highlighted and robotic soccer is presented as an appropriate test bed for MAS. This survey does not focus exclusively on robotic systems. However, we believe that much of the prior research in non-robotic MAS is relevant to robotic MAS, and we explicitly discuss several robotic MAS, including all of those presented in this issue.

/pdf/multiagent-systems-a-survey-from-a-machine-learning-yps633tity.pdf

Multiagent Systems: A Survey from a Machine Learning Perspective

Reinforcement learning is an effective technique for learning action policies in discrete stochastic environments, but its efficiency can decay exponentially with the size of the state space. In many situations significant portions of a large state space may be irrelevant to a specific goal and can be aggregated into a few, relevant, states. The U Tree algorithm generates a tree based state discretization that efficiently finds the relevant state chunks of large propositional domains. In this paper, we extend the U Tree algorithm to challenging domains with a continuous state space for which there is no initial discretization. This Continuous U Tree algorithm transfers traditional regression tree techniques to reinforcement learning. We have performed experiments in a variety of domains that show that Continuous U Tree effectively handles large continuous state spaces. In this paper, we report on results in two domains, one gives a clear visualization of the algorithm and another empirically demonstrates an effective state discretization in a simple multi-agent environment.

/pdf/tree-based-discretization-for-continuous-state-space-323h61zq88.pdf

Tree based discretization for continuous state space reinforcement learning

This paper introduces a principled approach for the design of a scalable general reinforcement learning agent. Our approach is based on a direct approximation of AIXI, a Bayesian optimality notion for general reinforcement learning agents. Previously, it has been unclear whether the theory of AIXI could motivate the design of practical algorithms. We answer this hitherto open question in the affirmative, by providing the first computationally feasible approximation to the AIXI agent. To develop our approximation, we introduce a new Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm along with an agent-specific extension to the Context Tree Weighting algorithm. Empirically, we present a set of encouraging results on a variety of stochastic and partially observable domains. We conclude by proposing a number of directions for future research.

/pdf/a-monte-carlo-aixi-approximation-163vuzpqc4.pdf

A Monte-Carlo AIXI approximation

A Monte Carlo AIXI Approximation

Sony has provided a remarkable platform for research and development in robotic agents, namely fully autonomous legged robots. In this paper, we describe our work using Sony's legged robots to participate at the RoboCup'98 legged robot demonstration and competition. Robotic soccer represents a very challenging environment for research into systems with multiple robots that need to achieve concrete objectives, particularly in the presence of an adversary. Furthermore RoboCup'98 offers an excellent opportunity for robot entertainment. We introduce the RoboCup context and briefly present Sony's legged robot. We developed a vision-based navigation and a Bayesian localization algorithm. Team strategy is achieved through pre-defined behaviors and learning by instruction.

/pdf/playing-soccer-with-legged-robots-50zqmj4fhv.pdf

Playing soccer with legged robots

As part of the winning team in the Sony legged robot league of the RoboCup 2003 international robotic soccer competition, we used automatic gait optimisation. This was the first such technique seen in the competition and allowed an improvement in both speed and stability over previous gaits. Additionally, the technique was fast enough to run on-site at the competition, optimising the walk for the particular surface used. This paper describes the gait optimisation technique as well as some surprising features of the final gait discovered by the algorithm.

/pdf/automatic-gait-optimisation-for-quadruped-robots-3hdnr9kdh9.pdf

William T. B. Uther

Papers

Tree based discretization for continuous state space reinforcement learning

A Monte-Carlo AIXI approximation

A Monte Carlo AIXI Approximation

Playing soccer with legged robots

Automatic Gait Optimisation for Quadruped Robots