Graph Searching with Predictions
Abstract
Consider an agent (say a robot) exploring an unknown graph in search
of some goal state. As it walks around the graph, it learns the
nodes and their neighbors. The agent only knows where the goal state
is when it reaches it. How do we reach this goal while moving only a
small distance? This problem seems hopeless, even on trees of
bounded degree, unless we give the agent some help. In our case,
this help comes in the form of *predictions*: each node $v$
provides a prediction $f(v)$ of its distance to the goal
vertex. Naturally if the predictions are correct, we can reach the
goal quickly. What if some of the predictions are erroneous? This
naturally models graph search problems where we are given some
quality function to guide us towards the goal: in our framework the
quality is given by the distance predictions.
In this work, we initiate a study of this problem with
predictions. We consider the problem on trees (where the problem is
already non-trivial) and give deterministic realgorithms whose
movement cost is only $O(OPT + ERR)$, where $OPT$ is the distance
from the start to the goal vertex, and the $ERR$ is the total number
of vertices whose predictions are erroneous. We also consider a
``planning'' version of the problem where the graph and predictions
are known at the beginning, so the agent can use this global
information to quickly reach the goal. For the planning version, we
give a different algorithm for trees, and then an algorithm for all
(weighted) graphs with bounded doubling dimension.
Research Areas
