Learning to Solve Multiple Goals

1997 ii Acknowledgments I thank my advisor, Dana Ballard, for his unwavering patience, support, and assistance throughout my eeorts on this work. As a constant source of enthusiasm, ideas, and insight, he allowed me to reach goals that would have been unattainable without his guidance. In addition, his willingness to read and comment on a seemingly endless succession of drafts of this document greatly helped to improve its scope, clarity, and readability. I would also like to thank my committee, for their penetrating questions and comments, forcing me to think hard about the assumptions and motivations that lay as a basis for this work. I am doubly indebted to Josh Tenenberg who rst set me on the path of learning to solve multiple goals, and shares my excitement for the concepts and ideas involved. He has also proven to be a good friend and of a genuinely warm spirit. Steve Whitehead is the other collaborator on the initial work on learning multiple goal, and was the rst person to get me interested in Machine Learning. To have been allowed the privilege of working with Josh and Steve is something for which I will always be grateful. Designing and implementing a driving simulator, as well as running experiments , involves a lot of hard, sometimes tedious work. I was fortunate to have several helpers along the way. Andrew Kachites McCallum collaborated on all versions of the driving simulator as well as lending me the NeXTstation on which much of the initial work was done. Andrew McCallum was a kindred spirit from the beginning: mon semblable, mon fr ere. His presence here made all the diier-ence, and I am greatly in his debt for his generosity. Tim Becker was also an integral part of the design and implementation of the Virtual Driving Simulator that was used in all experiments described herein. He taught me much about programming and design, and without his eeorts none of this work would have been possible. He has also been a good friend and supporter throughout my presence at Rochester, and our hikes in the Colorado Rockies and our many long conversations will always be a highlight of my memories. Eric Ringger implemented some ideas for using lookahead, which I'm sorry we never had time to pursue and was always happy to give thoughtful responses to all sorts of wild ideas. I would iii also like to …