Non-Asymptotic Uniform Rates of Consistency for k-NN Regression

We derive high-probability finite-sample uniform rates of consistency for $k$-NN regression that are optimal up to logarithmic factors under mild assumptions. We moreover show that $k$-NN regression adapts to an unknown lower intrinsic dimension automatically. We then apply the $k$-NN regression rates to establish new results about estimating the level sets and global maxima of a function from noisy observations.Comment: In Proceedings of 33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2019

The Dreaming Variational Autoencoder for Reinforcement Learning Environments

Reinforcement learning has shown great potential in generalizing over raw sensory data using only a single neural network for value optimization. There are several challenges in the current state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms that prevent them from converging towards the global optima. It is likely that the solution to these problems lies in short- and long-term planning, exploration and memory management for reinforcement learning algorithms. Games are often used to benchmark reinforcement learning algorithms as they provide a flexible, reproducible, and easy to control environment. Regardless, few games feature a state-space where results in exploration, memory, and planning are easily perceived. This paper presents The Dreaming Variational Autoencoder (DVAE), a neural network based generative modeling architecture for exploration in environments with sparse feedback. We further present Deep Maze, a novel and flexible maze engine that challenges DVAE in partial and fully-observable state-spaces, long-horizon tasks, and deterministic and stochastic problems. We show initial findings and encourage further work in reinforcement learning driven by generative exploration.Comment: Best Student Paper Award, Proceedings of the 38th SGAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge, UK, 2018, Artificial Intelligence XXXV, 201

Providing location everywhere

Anacleto R., Figueiredo L., Novais P., Almeida A., Providing Location Everywhere, in Progress in Artificial Intelligence, Antunes L., Sofia Pinto H. (eds), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 7026, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-24768-2, (Proceedings of the 15th Portuguese conference on Artificial Intelligence - EPIA 2011, Lisboa, Portugal), pp 15-28, 2011.The ability to locate an individual is an essential part of many applications, specially the mobile ones. Obtaining this location in an open environment is relatively simple through GPS (Global Positioning System), but indoors or even in dense environments this type of location system doesn’t provide a good accuracy. There are already systems that try to suppress these limitations, but most of them need the existence of a structured environment to work. Since Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) try to suppress the need of a structured environment we propose an INS based on Micro Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS) that is capable of, in real time, compute the position of an individual everywhere