Overview
What this challenge is about.
Formulate a warehouse restocking POMDP, implement a planner, and compare it to a greedy heuristic. Earn a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
The startup (around 90 people, Series B, operating in 14 warehouses across India and Singapore) loses about INR 7-9 lakh per warehouse per month to stock-outs that the current greedy heuristic doesn't anticipate.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Build a POMDP planner that reduces stock-outs in a real warehouse simulator without inflating robot idle time.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Formulate a real-world problem as a POMDP
- Implement and tune a Monte Carlo planner over beliefs
- Compare planners on operations-level KPIs, not just expected reward
- Communicate planner behavior to an operations audience
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Advanced Robotics
Master · Applied Ai
Strong alignment
This challenge maps to Advanced Robotics at the Master level. It sharpens the same practical skills your coursework expects — but in a real industry context with actual constraints and deliverables.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Planning Under Uncertainty
Apply planning under uncertainty to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Pomdp
Apply pomdp to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Monte Carlo Planning
Apply monte carlo planning to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Simulation
Apply simulation to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Python
Write clean, efficient Python for data processing, automation, and backend services.
- Operations Research
Apply operations research to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
AI Engineer
Shipping a planner against real operational KPIs and writing an ops-team rollout plan is the AI-engineer pattern at warehouse-tech companies.
This challenge sharpens
- pomdp
- planning-under-uncertainty
- simulation
ML Researcher
Sensitivity-analysis discipline and faithful problem formulation are the rigor markers ML researchers carry across applied projects.
This challenge sharpens
- monte-carlo-planning
- simulation
- operations-research