Agents
Analysis of Microarray Data using Artificial Intelligence Based Techniques
Microarray is one of the essential technologies used by the biologist to measure genome-wide expression levels of genes in a particular organism under some particular conditions or stimuli. As microarrays technologies have become more prevalent, the challenges of analyzing these data for getting better insight about biological processes have essentially increased. Due to availability of artificial intelligence based sophisticated computational techniques, such as artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, and many other nature-inspired algorithms, it is possible to analyse microarray gene expression data in more better way. Here, we reviewed artificial intelligence based techniques for the analysis of microarray gene expression data. Further, challenges in the field and future work direction have also been suggested.
Managing Autonomous Mobility on Demand Systems for Better Passenger Experience
Autonomous mobility on demand systems, though still in their infancy, have very promising prospects in providing urban population with sustainable and safe personal mobility in the near future. While much research has been conducted on both autonomous vehicles and mobility on demand systems, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that shows how to manage autonomous mobility on demand systems for better passenger experience. We introduce the Expand and Target algorithm which can be easily integrated with three different scheduling strategies for dispatching autonomous vehicles. We implement an agent-based simulation platform and empirically evaluate the proposed approaches with the New York City taxi data. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm significantly improve passengers' experience by reducing the average passenger waiting time by up to 29.82% and increasing the trip success rate by up to 7.65%.
Probabilistic Inference Techniques for Scalable Multiagent Decision Making
Kumar, Akshat, Zilberstein, Shlomo, Toussaint, Marc
Decentralized POMDPs provide an expressive framework for multiagent sequential decision making. However, the complexity of these models---NEXP-Complete even for two agents---has limited their scalability. We present a promising new class of approximation algorithms by developing novel connections between multiagent planning and machine learning. We show how the multiagent planning problem can be reformulated as inference in a mixture of dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). This planning-as-inference approach paves the way for the application of efficient inference techniques in DBNs to multiagent decision making. To further improve scalability, we identify certain conditions that are sufficient to extend the approach to multiagent systems with dozens of agents. Specifically, we show that the necessary inference within the expectation-maximization framework can be decomposed into processes that often involve a small subset of agents, thereby facilitating scalability. We further show that a number of existing multiagent planning models satisfy these conditions. Experiments on large planning benchmarks confirm the benefits of our approach in terms of runtime and scalability with respect to existing techniques.
Automated Linear Function Submission-based Double Auction as Bottom-up Real-Time Pricing in a Regional Prosumers' Electricity Network
Taniguchi, Tadahiro, Kawasaki, Koki, Fukui, Yoshiro, Takata, Tomohiro, Yano, Shiro
A linear function submission-based double-auction (LFS-DA) mechanism for a regional electricity network is proposed in this paper. Each agent in the network is equipped with a battery and a generator. Each agent simultaneously becomes a producer and consumer of electricity, i.e., a prosumer and trades electricity in the regional market at a variable price. In the LFS-DA, each agent uses linear demand and supply functions when they submit bids and asks to an auctioneer in the regional market.The LFS-DA can achieve an exact balance between electricity demand and supply for each time slot throughout the learning phase and was shown capable of solving the primal problem of maximizing the social welfare of the network without any central price setter, e.g., a utility or a large electricity company, in contrast with conventional real-time pricing (RTP). This paper presents a clarification of the relationship between the RTP algorithm derived on the basis of a dual decomposition framework and LFS-DA. Specifically, we proved that the changes in the price profile of the LFS-DA mechanism are equal to those achieved by the RTP mechanism derived from the dual decomposition framework except for a constant factor.
The Ceteris Paribus Structure of Logics of Game Forms
Grossi, Davide, Lorini, Emiliano, Schwarzentruber, Francois
The article introduces a ceteris paribus modal logic, called CP, interpreted on the equivalence classes induced by finite sets of propositional atoms. This logic is studied and then used to embed three logics of strategic interaction, namely atemporal STIT, the coalition logic of propositional control (CL PC) and the starless fragment of the dynamic logic of propositional assignments (DL PA). The embeddings highlight a common ceteris paribus structure underpinning the key operators of all these apparently very different logics and show, we argue, remarkable similarities behind some of the most influential formalisms for reasoning about strategic interaction.
Feasibility Study: Using Highways for Bounded-Suboptimal Multi-Agent Path Finding
Cohen, Liron (University of Southern California) | Uras, Tansel (University of Southern California) | Koenig, Sven (University of Southern California)
Multi-agent path-finding (MAPF) is important for applications such as the kind of warehousing done by Kiva systems. Solving the problem optimally is NP-hard, yet finding low-cost solutions is important. Bounded-suboptimal MAPF algorithms, such as enhanced conflict-based search (ECBS), often do not perform well in warehousing domains with many agents. We therefore develop bounded-suboptimal MAPF algorithms, called CBS+HWY and ECBS+HWY, that exploit the problem structure of a given MAPF instance by finding paths for the agents that include edges from user-provided highways, which encourages a global behavior of the agents that avoids collisions. On the theoretical side, we develop a simple approach that uses highways for MAPF and provides suboptimality guarantees. On the experimental side, we demonstrate that ECBS+HWY can decrease the runtimes and solution costs of ECBS in Kiva-like domains with many agents if the highways capture the problem structures well.
ICBS: The Improved Conflict-Based Search Algorithm for Multi-Agent Pathfinding
Boyarski, Eli (Bar-Ilan University) | Felner, Ariel (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) | Stern, Roni (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) | Sharon, Guni (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) | Betzalel, Oded (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) | Tolpin, David (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) | Shimony, Eyal (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Conflict-Based Search (CBS) and its generalization, Meta-Agent CBS are amongst the strongest newly introduced algorithms for Multi-Agent Path Finding. This paper introduces ICBS, an improved version of CBS. ICBS incorporates three orthogonal improvements to CBS which are systematically described and studied. Experimental results show that each of these improvements reduces the runtime over basic CBS by up to 20x in many cases. When all three improvements are combined, an even larger improvement is achieved, producing state-ofthe art results for a number of domains.
Security Games with Information Leakage: Modeling and Computation
Xu, Haifeng, Jiang, Albert X., Sinha, Arunesh, Rabinovich, Zinovi, Dughmi, Shaddin, Tambe, Milind
Most models of Stackelberg security games assume that the attacker only knows the defender's mixed strategy, but is not able to observe (even partially) the instantiated pure strategy. Such partial observation of the deployed pure strategy -- an issue we refer to as information leakage -- is a significant concern in practical applications. While previous research on patrolling games has considered the attacker's real-time surveillance, our settings, therefore models and techniques, are fundamentally different. More specifically, after describing the information leakage model, we start with an LP formulation to compute the defender's optimal strategy in the presence of leakage. Perhaps surprisingly, we show that a key subproblem to solve this LP (more precisely, the defender oracle) is NP-hard even for the simplest of security game models. We then approach the problem from three possible directions: efficient algorithms for restricted cases, approximation algorithms, and heuristic algorithms for sampling that improves upon the status quo. Our experiments confirm the necessity of handling information leakage and the advantage of our algorithms.
Learning the Structure and Parameters of Large-Population Graphical Games from Behavioral Data
We consider learning, from strictly behavioral data, the structure and parameters of linear influence games (LIGs), a class of parametric graphical games introduced by Irfan and Ortiz (2014). LIGs facilitate causal strategic inference (CSI): Making inferences from causal interventions on stable behavior in strategic settings. Applications include the identification of the most influential individuals in large (social) networks. Such tasks can also support policy-making analysis. Motivated by the computational work on LIGs, we cast the learning problem as maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) of a generative model defined by pure-strategy Nash equilibria (PSNE). Our simple formulation uncovers the fundamental interplay between goodness-of-fit and model complexity: good models capture equilibrium behavior within the data while controlling the true number of equilibria, including those unobserved. We provide a generalization bound establishing the sample complexity for MLE in our framework. We propose several algorithms including convex loss minimization (CLM) and sigmoidal approximations. We prove that the number of exact PSNE in LIGs is small, with high probability; thus, CLM is sound. We illustrate our approach on synthetic data and real-world U.S. congressional voting records. We briefly discuss our learning framework's generality and potential applicability to general graphical games.