Looking for the right time to shift strategy in the exploration/exploitation dilemma

Abstract

Balancing exploratory and exploitative behavior is an essential dilemma faced by adaptive agents. The challenge of finding a good trade-off between exploration (learn new things) and exploitation (act optimally based on what is already known) has been largely studied for decision-making problems where the agent must learn a policy of actions. In this paper we propose the engaged climber method, designed for solving the exploration-exploitation dilemma. The solution consists in explicitly creating two different policies (for exploring or for exploiting), and to determine the good moments to shift from the one to the other by the use of notions like engagement and curiosity.