English

Adaptive Control of Positive Systems with Application to Learning SSP

Optimization and Control 2025-04-22 v3 Systems and Control Systems and Control

Abstract

An adaptive controller is proposed and analyzed for the class of infinite-horizon optimal control problems in positive linear systems presented in (Ohlin et al., 2024b). This controller is derived from the solution of a "data-driven algebraic equation" constructed using the model-free Bellman equation from Q-learning. The equation is driven by data correlation matrices that do not scale with the number of data points, enabling efficient online implementation. Consequently, a sufficient condition guaranteeing stability and robustness to unmodeled dynamics is established. The derived results also provide a quantitative characterization of the interplay between excitation level and robustness to unmodeled dynamics. The class of optimal control problems considered here is equivalent to Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problems, allowing for a performance comparison between the proposed adaptive policy and model-free algorithms for learning the stochastic shortest path, as demonstrated in the numerical experiment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.17012,
  title  = {Adaptive Control of Positive Systems with Application to Learning SSP},
  author = {Fethi Bencherki and Anders Rantzer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.17012},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 7th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference (L4DC)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:45:37.656Z