This book collects recent theoretical advances and concrete applications of learning automata (LAs) in various areas of computer science, presenting a broad treatment of the computer science field in a survey style. Learning automata (LAs) have proven to be effective decision-making agents, especially within unknown stochastic environments. The book starts with a brief explanation of LAs and their baseline variations. It subsequently introduces readers to a number of recently developed, complex structures used to supplement LAs, and describes their steady-state behaviors. These complex structures have been developed because, by design, LAs are simple units used to perform simple tasks; their full potential can only be tapped when several interconnected LAs cooperate to produce a group synergy. In turn, the next part of the book highlights a range of LA-based applications in diverse computer science domains, from wireless sensor networks, to peer-to-peer networks, to complex social networks, and finally to Petri nets. The book accompanies the reader on a comprehensive journey, starting from basic concepts, continuing to recent theoretical findings, and ending in the applications of LAs in problems from numerous research domains. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for all computer engineers, scientists, and students, especially those whose work involves the reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence domains.

This book examines the intelligent random walk algorithms based on learning automata: these versions of random walk algorithms gradually obtain required information from the nature of the application to improve their efficiency. The book also describes the corresponding applications of this type of random walk algorithm, particularly as an efficient prediction model for large-scale networks such as peer-to-peer and social networks. The book opens new horizons for designing prediction models and problem-solving methods based on intelligent random walk algorithms, which are used for modeling and simulation in various types of networks, including computer, social and biological networks, and which may be employed a wide range of real-world applications.

This book collects recent theoretical advances and concrete applications of learning automata (LAs) in various areas of computer science, presenting a broad treatment of the computer science field in a survey style. Learning automata (LAs) have proven to be effective decision-making agents, especially within unknown stochastic environments. The book starts with a brief explanation of LAs and their baseline variations. It subsequently introduces readers to a number of recently developed, complex structures used to supplement LAs, and describes their steady-state behaviors. These complex structures have been developed because, by design, LAs are simple units used to perform simple tasks; their full potential can only be tapped when several interconnected LAs cooperate to produce a group synergy. In turn, the next part of the book highlights a range of LA-based applications in diverse computer science domains, from wireless sensor networks, to peer-to-peer networks, to complex social networks, and finally to Petri nets. The book accompanies the reader on a comprehensive journey, starting from basic concepts, continuing to recent theoretical findings, and ending in the applications of LAs in problems from numerous research domains. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for all computer engineers, scientists, and students, especially those whose work involves the reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence domains.