Empirical Evaluation of Local Search Methods for Adapting Planning Policies in a Stochastic Environment

Abstract

Optimization of expected values in a stochastic domain is common in real world applications. However, it is often difficult to solve such optimization problems without significant knowledge about the surface defined by the stochastic function. In this paper we examine the use of local search techniques to solve stochastic optimization. In particular, we analyze assumptions of smoothness upon which these approaches often rely. We examine these assumptions in the context of optimizing search heuristics for a planner/scheduler on two problem domains. We compare three search algorithms to improve the heuristic sets and show that the two chosen local search algorithms perform well. We present empirical data that suggests this is due to smoothness properties of the search space for the search algorithms.