19 research outputs found
Integrating Learning from Examples into the Search for Diagnostic Policies
This paper studies the problem of learning diagnostic policies from training
examples. A diagnostic policy is a complete description of the decision-making
actions of a diagnostician (i.e., tests followed by a diagnostic decision) for
all possible combinations of test results. An optimal diagnostic policy is one
that minimizes the expected total cost, which is the sum of measurement costs
and misdiagnosis costs. In most diagnostic settings, there is a tradeoff
between these two kinds of costs. This paper formalizes diagnostic decision
making as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The paper introduces a new family of
systematic search algorithms based on the AO* algorithm to solve this MDP. To
make AO* efficient, the paper describes an admissible heuristic that enables
AO* to prune large parts of the search space. The paper also introduces several
greedy algorithms including some improvements over previously-published
methods. The paper then addresses the question of learning diagnostic policies
from examples. When the probabilities of diseases and test results are computed
from training data, there is a great danger of overfitting. To reduce
overfitting, regularizers are integrated into the search algorithms. Finally,
the paper compares the proposed methods on five benchmark diagnostic data sets.
The studies show that in most cases the systematic search methods produce
better diagnostic policies than the greedy methods. In addition, the studies
show that for training sets of realistic size, the systematic search algorithms
are practical on todays desktop computers
Survey on assembly sequencing: a combinatorial and geometrical perspective
A systematic overview on the subject of assembly sequencing is presented. Sequencing lies at the core of assembly planning, and variants include finding a feasible sequence—respecting the precedence constraints between the assembly operations—, or determining an optimal one according to one or several operational criteria. The different ways of representing the space of feasible assembly sequences are described, as well as the search and optimization algorithms that can be used. Geometry plays a fundamental role in devising the precedence constraints between assembly operations, and this is the subject of the second part of the survey, which treats also motion in contact in the context of the actual performance of assembly operations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft
Improving Heuristics Through Relaxed Search - An Analysis of TP4 and HSP*a in the 2004 Planning Competition
The hm admissible heuristics for (sequential and temporal) regression
planning are defined by a parameterized relaxation of the optimal cost function
in the regression search space, where the parameter m offers a trade-off
between the accuracy and computational cost of theheuristic. Existing methods
for computing the hm heuristic require time exponential in m, limiting them to
small values (m andlt= 2). The hm heuristic can also be viewed as the optimal
cost function in a relaxation of the search space: this paper presents relaxed
search, a method for computing this function partially by searching in the
relaxed space. The relaxed search method, because it computes hm only
partially, is computationally cheaper and therefore usable for higher values of
m. The (complete) hm heuristic is combined with partial hm heuristics, for m =
3,..., computed by relaxed search, resulting in a more accurate heuristic.
This use of the relaxed search method to improve on the hm heuristic is
evaluated by comparing two optimal temporal planners: TP4, which does not use
it, and HSP*a, which uses it but is otherwise identical to TP4. The comparison
is made on the domains used in the 2004 International Planning Competition, in
which both planners participated. Relaxed search is found to be cost effective
in some of these domains, but not all. Analysis reveals a characterization of
the domains in which relaxed search can be expected to be cost effective, in
terms of two measures on the original and relaxed search spaces. In the domains
where relaxed search is cost effective, expanding small states is
computationally cheaper than expanding large states and small states tend to
have small successor states
Classification via sequential testing
The problem of generating the sequence of tests required to reach a diagnostic conclusion with minimum average cost, which is also known as test sequencing problem, is considered. The test sequencing problem is formulated as an optimal binary AND/OR decision tree construction problem, whose solution is known to be NP-complete. The problem can be solved optimally using dynamic programming or AND/OR graph search methods (AO*, CF, and HS). However, for large systems, the associated computational effort with dynamic programming or AND/OR graph search methods is substantial, due to the rapidly increasing number of nodes in AND/OR search graph. In order to prevent the computational explosion, one-step or multistep lookahead heuristic algorithms have been developed to solve the test sequencing problem. Our approach is based on integrating concepts from the one-step lookahead heuristic algorithms and the strategies used in Huffman coding. The effectiveness of the algorithms is demonstrated on several test cases. The traditional test sequencing problem is generalized here to include asymmetrical tests. Our approach to test sequencing can be adapted to solve a wide variety of binary identification problems arising in decision table programming, medical diagnosis, database query processing, quality assurance, and pattern recognition