Exploiting causality for selective belief filtering in dynamic Bayesian networks

DOI10.1613/JAIR.5044zbMATH Open1357.68236arXiv1401.7941OpenAlexW3100623317WikidataQ129489261 ScholiaQ129489261MaRDI QIDQ2805283FDOQ2805283

Authors: Stefano V. Albrecht, Subramanian Ramamoorthy 

Publication date: 11 May 2016

Published in: The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) are a general model for stochastic processes with partially observed states. Belief filtering in DBNs is the task of inferring the belief state (i.e. the probability distribution over process states) based on incomplete and noisy observations. This can be a hard problem in complex processes with large state spaces. In this article, we explore the idea of accelerating the filtering task by automatically exploiting causality in the process. We consider a specific type of causal relation, called passivity, which pertains to how state variables cause changes in other variables. We present the Passivity-based Selective Belief Filtering (PSBF) method, which maintains a factored belief representation and exploits passivity to perform selective updates over the belief factors. PSBF produces exact belief states under certain assumptions and approximate belief states otherwise, where the approximation error is bounded by the degree of uncertainty in the process. We show empirically, in synthetic processes with varying sizes and degrees of passivity, that PSBF is faster than several alternative methods while achieving competitive accuracy. Furthermore, we demonstrate how passivity occurs naturally in a complex system such as a multi-robot warehouse, and how PSBF can exploit this to accelerate the filtering task.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7941

Recommendations

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2243411
• Constant-space reasoning in dynamic Bayesian networks
• Dynamic Bayesian networks: a factored model of probabilistic dynamics
• Lifted Bayesian filtering in multiset rewriting systems
• Dynamic Bayesian networks as formal abstractions of structured stochastic processes

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Multivariate analysis (62H99) Non-Markovian processes: estimation (62M09) Reasoning under uncertainty in the context of artificial intelligence (68T37) Artificial intelligence for robotics (68T40)

Cited In (1)

• Autonomous agents modelling other agents: a comprehensive survey and open problems

This page was built for publication: Exploiting causality for selective belief filtering in dynamic Bayesian networks

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2805283)