Autonomous mobile agents often operate in hazardous environments, necessitating an awareness of safety. These agents can have non-linear, stochastic dynamics that must be considered during planning to guarantee bounded risk. Most state of the art methods require closed-form dynamics to verify plan correctness and safety however modern robotic systems often have dynamics that are learned from data. Thus, there is a need to perform efficient trajectory planning with guarantees on risk for agents without known dynamics models. We propose a "generate-and-test" approach to risk-bounded planning in which a planner generates a candidate trajectory using an approximate linear dynamics model and a validator assesses the risk of the trajectory, computing additional safety constraints for the planner if the candidate does not satisfy the desired risk bound. To acquire the approximate model, we use a variational autoencoder to learn a latent linear dynamics model and encode the planning problem into the latent space to generate the candidate trajectory. The VAE also serves to sample trajectories around the candidate to use in the validator. We demonstrate that our algorithm, LaPlaSS, is able to generate trajectory plans with bounded risk for a real-world agent with learned dynamics and is an order of magnitude more efficient than the state of the art.

ML-augmented algorithms utilize predictions to achieve performance beyond their worst-case bounds. Producing these predictions might be a costly operation - this motivated Im et al. (2022) to introduce the study of algorithms which use predictions parsimoniously. We design parsimonious algorithms for caching and MTS with action predictions, proposed by Antoniadis et al. (2023), focusing on the parameters of consistency (performance with perfect predictions) and smoothness (dependence of their performance on the prediction error). Our algorithm for caching is 1-consistent, robust, and its smoothness deteriorates with the decreasing number of available predictions. We propose an algorithm for general MTS whose consistency and smoothness both scale linearly with the decreasing number of predictions. Without the restriction on the number of available predictions, both algorithms match the earlier guarantees achieved by Antoniadis et al. (2023). Caching, introduced by Sleator and Tarjan (1985), is a fundamental problem in online computation important both in theory and practice. Here, we have a fast memory (cache) which can contain up to k different pages and we receive a sequence of requests to pages in an online manner. Whenever a page is requested, it needs to be loaded in the cache. Therefore, if the requested page is already in the cache, it can be accessed at no cost. Otherwise, we suffer a page fault: we have to evict one page from the cache and load the requested page in its place. The page to evict is to be chosen without knowledge of the future requests and our target is to minimize the total number of page faults. Caching is a special case of Metrical Task Systems introduced by Borodin et al. (1992) as a generalization of many fundamental online problems. In the beginning, we are given a metric space M of states which can be interpreted as actions or configurations of some system. A recently emerging field of learning-augmented algorithms, introduced in seminal papers by Kraska et al. (2018) and Lykouris and Vassilvitskii (2021), investigates approaches to improve the performance of algorithms using predictions, possibly generated by some ML model.

In the modern information society, conventional Neumann-type computers face a serious problem of increased complexity and cost in computation. While the information processing capacity of computers is predicted to reach its limits because of the limit of Moore's law and the von Neumann bottleneck, the required computing power is increasing exponentially. Under these circumstances, new efficient domain-specific computational architectures beyond the von Neumann type are demanded [1]. The serious problem particularly appears in combinatorial optimization problems [2]. Recently, the Ising machine has been proposed as a solution and its practical applications are being investigated [3-7]. There, the combinatorial optimization problem is mapped onto the ground-state search of the Ising model, which is originally a mathematical model of magnetic materials [8, 9]. On the other hand, research has been intensively conducted to construct combinatorial optimization machines that mimic the information processing of living organisms. This is because organisms often perform sophisticated information processing such as image recognitions, sound recognitions, and optimizations with low energy consumption. One of the simplest and most useful machines of such kinds is a computing technology inspired by the information processing of the amoeboid organism [10, 11].

Portfolio management is one of the unresponded problems of the Motion Pictures Industry (MPI). To design an optimal portfolio for an MPI distributor, it is essential to predict the box office of each project. Moreover, for an accurate box office prediction, it is critical to consider the effect of the celebrities involved in each MPI project, which was impossible with any precedent expert-based method. Additionally, the asymmetric characteristic of MPI data decreases the performance of any predictive algorithm. In this paper, firstly, the fame score of the celebrities is determined using a large language model. Then, to tackle the asymmetric character of MPI's data, projects are classified. Furthermore, the box office prediction takes place for each class of projects. Finally, using a hybrid multi-attribute decision-making technique, the preferability of each project for the distributor is calculated, and benefiting from a bi-objective optimization model, the optimal portfolio is designed.

Training an effective deep learning model to learn ocean processes involves careful choices of various hyperparameters. We leverage the advanced search algorithms for multiobjective optimization in DeepHyper, a scalable hyperparameter optimization software, to streamline the development of neural networks tailored for ocean modeling. The focus is on optimizing Fourier neural operators (FNOs), a data-driven model capable of simulating complex ocean behaviors. Selecting the correct model and tuning the hyperparameters are challenging tasks, requiring much effort to ensure model accuracy. DeepHyper allows efficient exploration of hyperparameters associated with data preprocessing, FNO architecture-related hyperparameters, and various model training strategies. We aim to obtain an optimal set of hyperparameters leading to the most performant model. Moreover, on top of the commonly used mean squared error for model training, we propose adopting the negative anomaly correlation coefficient as the additional loss term to improve model performance and investigate the potential trade-off between the two terms. The experimental results show that the optimal set of hyperparameters enhanced model performance in single timestepping forecasting and greatly exceeded the baseline configuration in the autoregressive rollout for long-horizon forecasting up to 30 days. Utilizing DeepHyper, we demonstrate an approach to enhance the use of FNOs in ocean dynamics forecasting, offering a scalable solution with improved precision.

Graphs are a natural representation for systems based on relations between connected entities. Combinatorial optimization problems, which arise when considering an objective function related to a process of interest on discrete structures, are often challenging due to the rapid growth of the solution space. The trial-and-error paradigm of Reinforcement Learning has recently emerged as a promising alternative to traditional methods, such as exact algorithms and (meta)heuristics, for discovering better decision-making strategies in a variety of disciplines including chemistry, computer science, and statistics. Despite the fact that they arose in markedly different fields, these techniques share significant commonalities. Therefore, we set out to synthesize this work in a unifying perspective that we term Graph Reinforcement Learning, interpreting it as a constructive decision-making method for graph problems. After covering the relevant technical background, we review works along the dividing line of whether the goal is to optimize graph structure given a process of interest, or to optimize the outcome of the process itself under fixed graph structure. Finally, we discuss the common challenges facing the field and open research questions. In contrast with other surveys, the present work focuses on non-canonical graph problems for which performant algorithms are typically not known and Reinforcement Learning is able to provide efficient and effective solutions.

This paper proposes \textit{GO4Align}, a multi-task optimization approach that tackles task imbalance by explicitly aligning the optimization across tasks. To achieve this, we design an adaptive group risk minimization strategy, compromising two crucial techniques in implementation: (i) dynamical group assignment, which clusters similar tasks based on task interactions; (ii) risk-guided group indicators, which exploit consistent task correlations with risk information from previous iterations. Comprehensive experimental results on diverse typical benchmarks demonstrate our method's performance superiority with even lower computational costs.

The hand plays a pivotal role in human ability to grasp and manipulate objects and controllable grasp synthesis is the key for successfully performing downstream tasks. Existing methods that use human intention or task-level language as control signals for grasping inherently face ambiguity. To address this challenge, we propose a grasp synthesis method guided by text prompts of object grasping parts, Text2Grasp, which provides more precise control. Specifically, we present a two-stage method that includes a text-guided diffusion model TextGraspDiff to first generate a coarse grasp pose, then apply a hand-object contact optimization process to ensure both plausibility and diversity. Furthermore, by leveraging Large Language Model, our method facilitates grasp synthesis guided by task-level and personalized text descriptions without additional manual annotations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves not only accurate part-level grasp control but also comparable performance in grasp quality.

Existing studies on federated learning (FL) are mostly focused on system orchestration for static snapshots of the network and making static control decisions (e.g., spectrum allocation). However, real-world wireless networks are susceptible to temporal variations of wireless channel capacity and users' datasets. In this paper, we incorporate multi-granular system dynamics (MSDs) into FL, including (M1) dynamic wireless channel capacity, captured by a set of discrete-time events, called $\mathscr{D}$-Events, and (M2) dynamic datasets of users. The latter is characterized by (M2-a) modeling the dynamics of user's dataset size via an ordinary differential equation and (M2-b) introducing dynamic model drift}, formulated via a partial differential inequality} drawing concrete analytical connections between the dynamics of users' datasets and FL accuracy. We then conduct FL orchestration under MSDs by introducing dynamic cooperative FL with dedicated MAC schedulers (DCLM), exploiting the unique features of open radio access network (O-RAN). DCLM proposes (i) a hierarchical device-to-device (D2D)-assisted model training, (ii) dynamic control decisions through dedicated O-RAN MAC schedulers, and (iii) asymmetric user selection. We provide extensive theoretical analysis to study the convergence of DCLM. We then optimize the degrees of freedom (e.g., user selection and spectrum allocation) in DCLM through a highly non-convex optimization problem. We develop a systematic approach to obtain the solution for this problem, opening the door to solving a broad variety of network-aware FL optimization problems. We show the efficiency of DCLM via numerical simulations and provide a series of future directions.

In collaborative human-robot order picking systems, human pickers and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) travel independently through a warehouse and meet at pick locations where pickers load items onto the AMRs. In this paper, we consider an optimization problem in such systems where we allocate pickers to AMRs in a stochastic environment. We propose a novel multi-objective Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach to learn effective allocation policies to maximize pick efficiency while also aiming to improve workload fairness amongst human pickers. In our approach, we model the warehouse states using a graph, and define a neural network architecture that captures regional information and effectively extracts representations related to efficiency and workload. We develop a discrete-event simulation model, which we use to train and evaluate the proposed DRL approach. In the experiments, we demonstrate that our approach can find non-dominated policy sets that outline good trade-offs between fairness and efficiency objectives. The trained policies outperform the benchmarks in terms of both efficiency and fairness. Moreover, they show good transferability properties when tested on scenarios with different warehouse sizes. The implementation of the simulation model, proposed approach, and experiments are published.