A distributed reinforcement learning approach for solving optimization problems

  • Authors:
  • Gabriela Czibula;Maria-Iuliana Bocicor;Istvan-Gergely Czibula

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania;Department of Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania;Department of Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

  • Venue:
  • CIT'11 Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS international conference on Communications and information technology
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Combinatorial optimization is the seeking for one or more optimal solutions in a well defined discrete problem space. The optimization methods are of great importance in practice, particularly in the engineering design process, the scientific experiments and the business decision-making. We are investigating in this paper a distributed reinforcement learning based approach for solving combinatorial optimization problems. We are particularly focusing on the bidimensional protein folding problem, an NP-complete problem that refers to predicting the bidimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence, an important optimization problem within many fields including bioinformatics, biochemistry, molecular biology and medicine. Our model is based on a distributed Q-learning approach. The experimental evaluation of the proposed system has provided encouraging results, indicating the potential of our proposal.