Minimax optimal dual control -- The single input case
Optimization and Control
2026-04-24 v2
Abstract
An explicit solution is derived for the Bellman inequality corresponding to minimax optimal dual control. The minimizing player determines control action as a function of past state measurements and inputs. The maximizing player selects disturbances and model parameters for the underlying linear time-invariant dynamics. The optimal minimizing policy is a dual controller that optimizes the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Once sufficient data has been collected, the policy becomes a deterministic certainty equivalence controller. However, when data is insufficient, the policy introduces a randomized term to improve excitation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.18550,
title = {Minimax optimal dual control -- The single input case},
author = {Anders Rantzer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.18550},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
An earlier version was submitted to The 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control