This paper analyzes the suitability of reinforcement learning (RL) for both programming and adapting situated agents. We discuss two RL algorithms: Q-learning and the Bucket Brigade. We introduce a special case of the Bucket Brigade, and analyze and compare its…

We develop a novel autonomous control synthesis strategy called Phase Space Navigator for the automatic synthesis of nonlinear control systems. The Phase Space Navigator generates global control laws by synthesizing flow shapes of dynamical systems and planning and navigating system…

We develop a qualitative method for understanding and representing phase space structures of complex systems and demonstrate the method with a program, MAPS --- Modeler and Analyzer for Phase Spaces, using deep domain knowledge of dynamical system theory. Given a…

by Lloyd Brodsky., Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-210).

It is obvious to anyone familiar with the rules of the game of chess that a king on an empty board can reach every square. It is true, but not obvious, that a knight can reach every square. Why is…

We describe the automatic synthesis of a global nonlinear controller for stabilizing a magnetic levitation system. The synthesized control system can stabilize the maglev vehicle with large initial displacements from an equilibrium, and possesses a much larger operating region than…

Lori Faith Lamel., Also issued as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1988., Includes bibliographical references., Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Vinton-Hayes, Bell Laboratories (GRPW), and Inference Corporation.

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to generate a reasonably accurate coordinate system on randomly distributed processors, using only local information and local communication. By coordinate systems we imply that each element assigns itself a logical coordinate that maps…

The need for robust and easily extensible systems for word sense disambiguation coupled with successes in training systems for a variety of tasks using large on-line corpora has led to extensive research into corpus-based statistical approaches to this problem. Promising…

A key problem in model-based object recognition is selection, namely, the problem of isolating regions in an image that are likely to come from a single object. This isolation can be either based solely on image data (data-driven) or can…