arXiv Machine Learning

SEArch: Optimistic Policy Selection Between Scene Noise and Drift for UAV Radar Search

arXiv:2606. 01325v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with radar sensors are deployed for target search missions in diverse environments, where targets exhibit characteristic signatures (e.

arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 9

Closing the Horizon Gap in Policy Optimization for Adversarial MDPs

The paper addresses policy optimization in online episodic tabular MDPs with adversarial losses and bandit feedback. By employing regularized Q‑functions, the authors eliminate the extra horizon factor present in previous policy‑optimization regret bounds, achieving high‑probability regret of ≥O(√{HS(H+A)T}) for known transitions and ≥O(HS√{AT}) for unknown transitions. These results improve horizon dependence and match the best-known bounds, with extensions to adversarial linear‑mixture MDPs.

By Mingyi Li, Taira Tsuchiya
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Evaluating Multimodal LLMs as Generalist Vision-Language-Action Agents for Drone Control: Commanding, Approaching, Tracking and Searching

The paper introduces DroneCATS-Agent, a modular framework that places a multimodal large language model (MLLM) at the core of a drone’s control loop, allowing the model to decide actions solely from prompts. It presents the DroneCATS benchmark, evaluating MLLMs on four tasks—approaching, tracking, searching, and multi‑drone commanding—without fine‑tuning or function‑calling. Results show that while small open models can navigate reliably, they often fail by mismanaging protocol termination, highlighting a gap between perception and action planning in current MLLMs.

By Jaewoo Park, Minyoung Lee, Sukmin Seo, Moonbin Yim, Hyunwook Yoon, Dohoon Ryu, Daehee Kim, Myungseo Song, Jihyuk Byun, Seunggyu Chang, Taeho Kil, Jiseob Kim, Bado Lee, Geewook Kim
arXiv Machine Learning
3d ago

The Price of Current-Effect Inference in Nonstationary Multi-Armed Bandits

The paper studies the trade‑off between maximizing rewards and accurately estimating current treatment effects in nonstationary multi‑armed bandits. For $K$‑armed bandits with H"older‑smooth mean rewards, the authors derive minimax bounds on expected dynamic regret under a high‑probability simultaneous coverage requirement for all current effects. They propose the TRACE algorithm, which achieves a regret–precision trade‑off that separates reward‑learning regret from the unavoidable cost of refreshing current‑effect estimates, and extend the method with an empirical‑Bernstein e‑process to adapt exploration while preserving worst‑case guarantees.

By Sharan Sahu, Martin T. Wells
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Towards Lifelong Aerial Autonomy: Geometric Memory Management for Continual Visual Place Recognition in Dynamic Environments

The paper addresses lifelong aerial autonomy by treating visual place recognition (VPR) as a mission‑based domain‑incremental learning problem. It introduces a heterogeneous memory framework that first trains on a static satellite exemplar memory and then uses a bounded replay buffer to retain selected airborne observations across missions. The proposed DBS‑Hybrid replay strategy, which blends prototype‑based diversity trimming with representative‑first feature‑space coverage, outperforms baseline methods in accuracy, generalization, and knowledge retention across multiple UAV missions.

By Xingyu Shao, Zhiqiang Yan, Liangzheng Sun, Mengfan He, Chao Chen, Jinhui Zhang, Chunyu Li, Ziyang Meng
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 30

The Decision Value of Perception Compute

arXiv:2609.35910v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Adaptive perception spends extra computation on inputs where perception is expected to improve. When perception feeds a downstream decision system, a b...

By Hoang Pham Cong, Ho Viet Duc Luong
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

Curriculum-Based Adversarial Heterogeneous Agent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Quad-Copter Landing in Maritime Settings

The paper presents a curriculum‑based adversarial heterogeneous agent reinforcement learning (HARL‑AC) approach for autonomous quad‑copter landing on a ship deck in maritime settings. Using Heterogeneous‑Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (HAPPO) in NVIDIA Isaac Lab, the authors train a cooperative control policy that outperforms domain‑randomized baselines, achieving up to 97.5% success on in‑distribution sea states and higher median success and lower crash rates on out‑of‑distribution sea states. The adversarially trained policy also exhibits more cautious behavior, slightly increasing timeouts but improving safety in severe, unseen conditions.

By Allan Minh-Tam Nguyen, Sree Showrya Kotala, Stefan Banioi-Crijman, Kurt Driessens, Rico M\"ockel