• python (the scripts were tested with versions 2.7 and 3.2)
• GCC 4.9 +
• cmake [cmake package]
• Boost version 1.53+ [libboost-dev package]
• Eigen 3.2+ library
• lp_solve library [lp-solve package]

Clone the AIToolbox repository, then build and test the installation with the following commands

NOTE: This was implemented with AIToolox in mid-year 2016. It is possile that more recent versions have different structures and import path mayb need to be changed.

cd AIToolbox_root
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j
ctest -V

Generate synthetic POMDP parameters to highlight the impact of using multiple environments. The model comprises as many environments as possible recommandations. The i-th environment corresponds to users choosing item i with a high probability (p=0.8) and uniform preference towards other recommandations. The reward is 0 if the recommendation does not match the user's choice, and 1 otherwise.

cd Data/
./prepare_synth.py -n [1] -k [2] -a [3] -t [4] -o [5] --norm --help

• [1] Number of items (Defaults to 3).
• [2] History length (Defaults to 2). Must be strictly greater than 1.
• [3] Positive scaling parameter for correct recommandation. Must be greater than 1. Defaults to 1.1.
• [4] Number of test sessions to generate following the generated distribution. Defaults to 2000.
• [5] Path to the output directory (Defaults to ../Code/Models).
• [--norm] If present, normalize the output transition probabilities.
• [--zip] If present, transitions are stored in an archive. Recommended for large state spaces.
• [--help] displays help about the script.

Estimate a POMDP model parameters and test sequences from the Foodmart dataset (.csv dataset files are included in the Data/ directory).

 cd Data/
 ./prepare_foodmart.py -p [1] -k [2] -u [3] -a [4] -t [5] -d [6] -o [7] -D [8] --norm --help

• [1] Items discretization level. Must be between 0 (1561 fine-grained products) and 4 (3 high-level categories). Defaults to 4.
• [2] History length, > 1. Defaults to 2.
• [3] Number of profiles to generate. Defaults to 5.
• [4] Positive scaling parameter for correct recommandation. Must be greater than 1. Defaults to 1.1.
• [5] Number of test sequences to generate. Defaults to 2000.
• [6] Path to the Foodmart dataset. Defaults to Data/Foodmart.gz.
• [7] Path to the output directory. Defaults to ../Code/Models.
• [8] Number of sequences to isolate to estimate each environment's transition probabilities.
• [--norm] If present, output transition probabilities are normalized.
• [--zip] If present, transitions are stored in an archive. Recommended for large state spaces.
• [--help] displays help about the script.

Generating POMDP parameters for a typical maze/path finding problem with multiple environments.

cd Data/
./prepare_maze.py -i [1] -n [2] -s [3] -t [4] -w [5] -g [6] -e [7] -wf [8] -o [9] --rdf --help

• [1] If given, load the maze structure from a file (see toy examples in the Mazes subdirectory). if not, the mazes are generated randomly with the following parameters.
• [2] Maze width and height.
• [3] Number of initial states in each maze. Defaults to 1.
• [4] Number of trap states in each maze (non-rewarding absorbing states). Defaults to 0.
• [5] Number of obstacles in each maze. Defaults to 0.
• [6] Number of goal states in each maze. Defaults to 1.
• [7] Number of mazes (environments) to generate. Defaults to 1.
• [8] Failure rate (equivalent to falling in a trap state) when going forward in the direction of an obstacle. Defaults to 0.05.
• [9] Path to the output directory (Defaults to ../Code/Models).
• [--norm] If present, normalize the output transition probabilities.
• [--rdf] If present, the failure rates (probability of staying put instead of realizing the intended action) for each environment are sampled uniformly over [0; 0.5[
• [--help] displays help about the script.

The following variables can be configured at the beginning of the run.sh script (e.g. if some libaries are installed locally and not globally)

• AIROOT: path to the AIToolbox installation directory.
• EIGEN: path to the Eigen library installation directory.
• LPSOLVE: path to the lpsolve library installation directory.
• GCC: path to the g++ binary.
• STDLIB: path to the stdlib matching the given gcc compiler.

  cd Code/
./run.sh -m [1] -d [2] -n [3] -k [4] -u [5] -g [6] -s [7] -h [8] -e [9] -x [10] -b [11] -c -p -v

• [1] Model to use. Defaults to mdp. Available options are
  • mdp. MDP model obtained by a weighted average of all the environments' transition probabilities and solved by Value iteration. The solver can be configured with
    • [7] Number of iterations. Defaults to 1000.
  • pbvi. point-based value iteration optimized for the MEMDP structure with options
    • [8] Horizon parameter. Must be greater than 1. Defaults to 2.
    • [11] Belief size. Defaults to 500.
  • pomcp, pomcpex, pamcpex, pamcp. Monte-carlo solvers. pamcp and pamcpex implement the past-aware graph initialization. pomcpex and pamcpex implement the exact belief computation. pomcp is the vanilla POMCP with MEMDP-optimized sampling (POMCP*)
    • [7] Number of simulation steps. Defaults to 1000.
    • [8] Horizon parameter. Must be greater than 1. Defaults to 2.
    • [10] Exploration parameter. Defaults to 10000 (high exploration).
    • [11] Number of particles for the belief approximation. Defaults to 500.
• [2] Dataset to use. Defaults to rd. Available options are
  • fm (foodmart recommandations) with following options
    • [3] Product discretization level. Defaults to 4.
    • [4] History length. Must be strictly greater than 1. Defaults to 2.
    • [5] User discretization level. Defaults to 0.
  • mz (maze solving problem) with following options
    • [3] Base name for the directory containing the corresponding MEMDP model parameters.
  • rd (synthetic data recommandations) with following options
    • [3] Number of actions. Defaults to 4.
    • [4] History length. Must be strictly greater than 1. Defaults to 2.
• [6] Discount Parameter. Must be strictly between 0 and 1. Defaults to 0.95.
• [9] Convergence criterion. Defaults to 0.01.
• [-c] If present, recompile the code before running (Note: this should be used whenever using a dataset with different parameters as the number of items, environments etc are determined at compilation time).
• [-p] If present, normalize the transition and use Kahan summation for more precision while handling small probabilities. Use this option if AIToolbox throws an Input transition table does not contain valid probabilities error.
• [-v] If present, enables verbose output. In verbose mode, evaluation results per environments are displayed, and the std::cerr stream is eanbled during evaluation.

• if needed, generate the data (already available on the repository)

 cd Data/
 python prepare_maze.py --norm --zip -n 5 -s 1 -g 1 -w 0 -t 0 -e 60 --rdf

• run the code (assuming the output directory is the default ROOT/Code/Models/)

cd ../Code/
./run.sh -m pbvi -d mz -n gen_5x5_101_60 -h 20 -b 100 -c
./run.sh -m pamcp -d mz -n gen_5x5_101_60 -h 10 -c	

• if needed, generate the data (already available on the repository)

 cd Data/
 python prepare_synth.py --norm --zip -n 10 -k 2

• run the code (assuming the output directory is the default ROOT/Code/Models/)

cd ../Code/
./run.sh -m mdp -d rd -n 10 -k 2 -c
./run.sh -m pamcp -d rd -n 10 -k 2 -c	
./run.sh -m pomcpex -d rd -n 10 -k 2 -c	

• if needed, generate the data (already available on the repository)

 cd Data/
 python prepare_foodmart.py --norm --zip -u 5 -p 3 -k 2

• run the code (assuming the output directory is the default ROOT/Code/Models/)

cd ../Code/
./run.sh -m mdp -d fm -n 3 -k 2 -u 5 -c
./run.sh -m pamcp -d rd -n 3 -k 2 -u 5 -c
./run.sh -m pbvi -d rd -n 3 -k 2 -u 5 -c	

• When using the --zip option for data generation, it might be necessary to run the script with python3 due to an issue with the gzip library in python < 3.