We present a message passing approach to Expected Free Energy (EFE) minimization on factor graphs, based on the theory introduced in [37]. By reformulating EFE minimization as Variational Free Energy minimization with epistemic priors, we transform a combinatorial search problem into a tractable inference problem solvable through standard variational techniques. Applying our message passing method to factorized state-space models enables efficient policy inference. We evaluate our method on environments with epistemic uncertainty: a stochastic gridworld and a partially observable Minigrid task. Agents using our approach consistently outperform conventional KL-control agents on these tasks, showing more robust planning and efficient exploration under uncertainty. In the stochastic gridworld environment, EFE-minimizing agents avoid risky paths, while in the partially observable minigrid setting, they conduct more systematic information-seeking. This approach bridges active inference theory with practical implementations, providing empirical evidence for the efficiency of epistemic priors in artificial agents.

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

A Message Passing Realization of Expected Free Energy Minimization

  • Wouter W. L. Nuijten,
  • Mykola Lukashchuk,
  • Thijs van de Laar,
  • Bert de Vries

摘要

We present a message passing approach to Expected Free Energy (EFE) minimization on factor graphs, based on the theory introduced in [37]. By reformulating EFE minimization as Variational Free Energy minimization with epistemic priors, we transform a combinatorial search problem into a tractable inference problem solvable through standard variational techniques. Applying our message passing method to factorized state-space models enables efficient policy inference. We evaluate our method on environments with epistemic uncertainty: a stochastic gridworld and a partially observable Minigrid task. Agents using our approach consistently outperform conventional KL-control agents on these tasks, showing more robust planning and efficient exploration under uncertainty. In the stochastic gridworld environment, EFE-minimizing agents avoid risky paths, while in the partially observable minigrid setting, they conduct more systematic information-seeking. This approach bridges active inference theory with practical implementations, providing empirical evidence for the efficiency of epistemic priors in artificial agents.