[mlpack] [GSoC] Asking About the Feasibility of an Idea in RL

[Ahmed Maher]

Sure! pointer-generator networks just have a layer on top of the normal
pointer networks which makes the code Namrata96 is planning to finish
before May (if I understood correctly) extendable to what I mentioned
earlier; what would be left is an RL algorithm (ex: ACKTR which is already
proposed or just simple REINFORCE which is implemented) and the MCTS. Is
the scope of tackling both suitable for GSoC? Is that a lot or too little
since you are more aware of how much time development for the mlpack
library would need? Or do you think that it is not a good idea in the first
place?

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 11:07 PM Marcus Marcus <marcus at virtual-artz.de>
wrote:

> Hello Ahmed,
>
> there is a WIP PR about pointer-generator networks:
> https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/1725, which goes in a similair
> direction
> and here is the mail discussion:
> http://knife.lugatgt.org/pipermail/mlpack/2019-February/003888.html. Do
> you
> think we should combine both approaches?
>
> Thanks,
> Marcus
>
> On 7. Mar 2019, at 13:11, Ahmed Maher <iahmedmaher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>          I hope you all are having a good day. I am a computer engineering
> student at Cairo University, Egypt currently in my last year.
>
>          I want to ask the maintainers of mlpack about how interested are
> they in the idea of adding pointer networks to the code base. I find it a
> good idea because pointer networks trained using deep RL algorithms have
> proven to be really good at solving combinatorial optimization problems
> like TSP and even on par with tools like Google OR-Tools in VRP while being
> end-to-end! Since mlpack monopolizes on speed, I think it would be good to
> have a foundation for expanding in this direction adding maybe MCTS later
> on which will make mlpack a necessity for people wanting to solve
> combinatorial problems as speed could be a deal breaker for other tools.
>
>          What are your thoughts on that? I attached the papers I have read
> about this topic for reference. Kindly find them below. Thanks.
>
> Pointer Networks <https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03134>
> Neural Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning
> <https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09940>
> Reinforcement Learning for Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem
> <https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04240>
>
> Best Regards,
> --
> Ahmed Maher AlAmir
> Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
> Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
> Giza, Egypt
>
> _______________________________________________
> mlpack mailing list
> mlpack at lists.mlpack.org
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>
>
> --
Ahmed Maher AlAmir
Senior Student, Computer Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University
Giza, Egypt
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