Semantic Feature Engine
We propose learning flexible but interpretable functions that aggregate a variable-length set of permutation-invariant feature vectors to predict a label. We use a deep lattice network model so we can architect the model structure to enhance interpretability, and add monotonicity constraints between inputs-and-outputs. We then use the proposed set function to automate the engineering of dense, interpretable features from sparse categorical features, which we call semantic feature engine. Experiments on real-world data show the achieved accuracy is similar to deep sets or deep neural networks, and is easier to debug and understand. …

Value Iteration Network (VIN)
We introduce the value iteration network: a fully differentiable neural network with a `planning module’ embedded within. Value iteration networks are suitable for making predictions about outcomes that involve planning-based reasoning, such as predicting a desired trajectory from an observation of a map. Key to our approach is a novel differentiable approximation of the value-iteration algorithm, which can be represented as a convolutional neural network, and trained end-to-end using standard backpropagation. We evaluate our value iteration networks on the task of predicting optimal obstacle-avoiding trajectories from an image of a landscape, both on synthetic data, and on challenging raw images of the Mars terrain.
Value Iteration Networks

NoisyNet
We introduce NoisyNet, a deep reinforcement learning agent with parametric noise added to its weights, and show that the induced stochasticity of the agent’s policy can be used to aid efficient exploration. The parameters of the noise are learned with gradient descent along with the remaining network weights. NoisyNet is straightforward to implement and adds little computational overhead. We find that replacing the conventional exploration heuristics for A3C, DQN and dueling agents (entropy reward and $\epsilon$-greedy respectively) with NoisyNet yields substantially higher scores for a wide range of Atari games, in some cases advancing the agent from sub to super-human performance. …