Dear colleagues, Learning and acting in large, probabilistic, relational worlds is investigated in research fields such as machine learning, intelligent agents, knowledge representation and optimization. This research has been ongoing for many years, and below follows an *announcement* for the first *book* that describes and surveys these developments in a unified manner.
It starts with 'learning sequential decision making problems under uncertainty' and surveys important developments related to knowledge representation, generalization and abstraction. The core of the book is a detailed and complete study of 'relational representations' in this field. In addition to introducing several new methodological, technical and algorithmic advances, the book contains complete surveys of relational reinforcement learning, first-order decision-theoretic planning, and matters related to world models, hierarchies and knowledge transfer. The book provides a complete and self-contained reference work, and is aimed at (PhD) students and researchers working on matters related to learning and acting in large, probabilistic, (relational) worlds. Best regards, Martijn van Otterlo ---------------------------------------------------------- Book Announcement ---------------------------------------------------------- THE LOGIC OF ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR: Knowledge Representation and Algorithms for Adaptive Sequential Decision Making under Uncertainty in First-Order and Relational Domains by Martijn van Otterlo 2009 -- IOS Press, Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington D.C. ISBN 978-1-58603-969-1 Hardcover, 500+pp, 800++refs (also available in electronic version) --- See for more information: http://www.iospress.nl/html/9781586039691.php --- Preface and TOC: (Online) http://www.booksonline.iospress.nl/Content/View.aspx?piid=11738 Contents: Chapter 1: Introduction / Chapter 2: Markov decision processes: concepts and algorithms / Chapter 3: Generalization and abstraction in MDPs / Chapter 4: Reasoning, learning and acting in first-order worlds / Chapter 5: Model-free algorithms for relational MDPs / Chapter 6: Model-based algorithms for relational MDPs / Chapter 7: Sapience, models and hierarchy / Chapter 8: Conclusions and future directions --------------------------------------------------------- Back Cover text: --------------------------------------------------------- Learning and reasoning in large, structured, probabilistic worlds is at the heart of artificial intelligence. Markov decision processes have become the de facto standard in modeling and solving sequential decision making problems under uncertainty. Many efficient reinforcement learning and dynamic programming techniques exist that can solve such problems. Until recently, the representational state-of-the-art in this field was based on propositional representations. However, it is hard to imagine a truly general, intelligent system that does not conceive of the world in terms of objects and their properties and relations to other objects. To this end, this book studies lifting Markov decision processes, reinforcement learning and dynamic programming to the first-order (or, relational) setting. Based on an extensive analysis of propositional representations and techniques, a methodological translation is constructed from the propositional to the relational setting. Furthermore, this book provides a thorough and complete description of the state-of-the-art, it surveys vital, related historical developments and it contains extensive descriptions of several new model-free and model-based solution techniques. -------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Ir. Martijn van Otterlo Department of Computer Science Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200A B3001 Heverlee, Belgium. TeLePhOnE ... +32 +16 32 7741 WeB ... http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~martijn eMaIl ... Martijn.vanOtterlo at cs.kuleuven.be -------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm _______________________________________________ uai mailing list uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai