Monte Carlo Tree Search with Boltzmann Exploration

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Painter, Michael, Baioumy, Mohamed, Hawes, Nick, Lacerda, Bruno
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Painter, Michael
Baioumy, Mohamed
Hawes, Nick
Lacerda, Bruno
author_facet Painter, Michael
Baioumy, Mohamed
Hawes, Nick
Lacerda, Bruno
contents Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) methods, such as Upper Confidence Bound applied to Trees (UCT), are instrumental to automated planning techniques. However, UCT can be slow to explore an optimal action when it initially appears inferior to other actions. Maximum ENtropy Tree-Search (MENTS) incorporates the maximum entropy principle into an MCTS approach, utilising Boltzmann policies to sample actions, naturally encouraging more exploration. In this paper, we highlight a major limitation of MENTS: optimal actions for the maximum entropy objective do not necessarily correspond to optimal actions for the original objective. We introduce two algorithms, Boltzmann Tree Search (BTS) and Decaying ENtropy Tree-Search (DENTS), that address these limitations and preserve the benefits of Boltzmann policies, such as allowing actions to be sampled faster by using the Alias method. Our empirical analysis shows that our algorithms show consistent high performance across several benchmark domains, including the game of Go.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_07732
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Monte Carlo Tree Search with Boltzmann Exploration
Painter, Michael
Baioumy, Mohamed
Hawes, Nick
Lacerda, Bruno
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) methods, such as Upper Confidence Bound applied to Trees (UCT), are instrumental to automated planning techniques. However, UCT can be slow to explore an optimal action when it initially appears inferior to other actions. Maximum ENtropy Tree-Search (MENTS) incorporates the maximum entropy principle into an MCTS approach, utilising Boltzmann policies to sample actions, naturally encouraging more exploration. In this paper, we highlight a major limitation of MENTS: optimal actions for the maximum entropy objective do not necessarily correspond to optimal actions for the original objective. We introduce two algorithms, Boltzmann Tree Search (BTS) and Decaying ENtropy Tree-Search (DENTS), that address these limitations and preserve the benefits of Boltzmann policies, such as allowing actions to be sampled faster by using the Alias method. Our empirical analysis shows that our algorithms show consistent high performance across several benchmark domains, including the game of Go.
title Monte Carlo Tree Search with Boltzmann Exploration
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07732