The paper introduces Graph-Based Stochastic-Power-UCT (GS-Power-UCT), a Monte‑Carlo graph search algorithm that shares states reached at the same planning depth while maintaining separate values for different depths. It achieves an $O(n^{-1/2})$ convergence rate for the root estimate in finite‑horizon stochastic MDPs, matching tree‑based methods but with better sample reuse. Two full‑state variants, GS-Power-UCT‑F and GS-Power-UCT‑F$^+$, further explore sample sharing and bias control, with GS-Power-UCT‑F$^+$ converging to the optimal infinite‑horizon discounted value when the cross‑depth gap vanishes. Experiments on stochastic planning benchmarks demonstrate improved sample efficiency over existing tree‑based and graph‑based baselines.
arXiv:2607. 05359v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Planning under uncertainty in continuous domains is essential for autonomous systems, yet computationally demanding.
By Idan Lev-Yehudi, Vadim Indelman
Planning under uncertainty in continuous domains is essential for autonomous systems, yet computationally demanding. Tree-based search methods such as Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) remain popular, but their branching structure can require sampling budgets that grow exponentially with lookahead depth in the worst case.
arXiv:2609.06489v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has demonstrated success in online planning for deterministic environments, yet significant challenges remain in adapt...
By Tuan Dam
The paper introduces a robust variant of Monte Carlo Tree Search that addresses ambiguities in transition dynamics and reward distributions, bridging the gap between simulation-based planning and real-world deployment. It incorporates a robust power mean backup operator and exploration bonuses to guarantee finite-sample convergence at every node, achieving an ≠O(n−1/2) convergence rate for root value estimation comparable to standard MCTS. Empirical results demonstrate robust performance in planning tasks even under significant model mismatches.
By Tuan Dam, Kishan Panaganti, Brahim Driss, Adam Wierman
arXiv:2510.17714v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Novel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have enabled the generation of large ensembles of redistricting plans modeled as a graph partit...
By Atticus McWhorter, Daryl DeFord
We study fixed-confidence best-action identification (BAI) in stochastic minimax trees. This problem is increasingly relevant in modern AI planning, where deep minimax search and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with language model long rollouts face a fundamental tradeoff: heuristic evaluations are cheap but biased, while accurate rollouts are reliable but prohibitively expensive.
CANOPY is a multi‑fidelity tree bandit algorithm that learns where a piecewise‑smooth prior holds instead of assuming global smoothness. It uses cheap random‑path probes to certify local aggregation bias and then focuses expensive leaf evaluations on cells where smoothness is violated. The method achieves provable fixed‑budget and regret guarantees that scale with the number of discontinuities, matching smooth‑tree rates when no violations exist and approaching structure‑blind search when violations are dense.
By Michael Jerge, Suman Jana
arXiv:2609.40035v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The policy-gradient theorem gives the exact gradient under the current policy, but finite on-policy samples may miss rare high-return trajectories. We...
By Junyu Lu, Shichao Weng, Zhiqiang Wang, Haojie Luo, Jingfan Zhang, Yuhua Zhou, Cheng Du, Yuzhuo Zhang, Xi Li, Jinwei Du, Tiancheng Feng, Chuan Xiao, Shuyuan Zheng
arXiv:2606. 01708v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study fixed-confidence best-action identification (BAI) in stochastic minimax trees.
By Peter Chen, Xi Chen
RheoSampling tackles the one‑hot dilemma in stochastic dynamic‑tree speculative decoding by decoupling token sampling from tree construction and verification. It injects a sampled token into deterministic top‑K slots, assigning distinct proxy probabilities for expansion and pruning while preserving the true sampling probability for verification, thereby achieving lossless, context‑aware top‑K construction with stochastic sampling. Experiments on various LLMs show higher acceptance rates and speedups compared to existing dynamic‑tree methods.
By Qiao Hu, Yepeng Weng, Bo Zhang, Takehisa Yairi
arXiv:2608. 12831v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Online platforms increasingly compare many adaptive decision policies---ranking systems, recommendation algorithms, pricing rules, and language-model agents---while each reward-bearing interaction can be costly or risky.
By Yuxiao Wen