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We consider a general class of Dynamic Programming (DP) problems with non-separable objective functions. We show that for any problem in this class, there exists an augmented-state DP problem which satisfies the Principle of Optimality and…
This paper studies the robust optimal control design for uncertain nonlinear systems from a perspective of robust adaptive dynamic programming (robust-ADP). The objective is to fill up a gap in the past literature of ADP where dynamic…
We consider optimization problems containing nonconvex quadratic functions for which semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations often yield strong bounds. We investigate linear inequalities that outer approximate the positive semidefinite…
Memory-Bounded Dynamic Programming (MBDP) has proved extremely effective in solving decentralized POMDPs with large horizons. We generalize the algorithm and improve its scalability by reducing the complexity with respect to the number of…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) can be solved in polynomial time by interior point methods. However, when the dimension of the problem gets large, interior point methods become impractical in terms of both computational time and memory…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) play a crucial role in control theory, traditionally as a computational tool. Beyond computation, the duality theory in convex optimization also provides valuable analytical insights and new proofs of classical…
Equipping approximate dynamic programming (ADP) with inputconstraints has a tremendous significance. This enables ADP to be applied tothe systems with actuator limitations, which is quite common for dynamicalsystems. In a conventional…
Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) has emerged as a powerful tool for analyzing the dynamics of non-linear systems from experimental datasets. Recently, several attempts have extended DMD to the context of low-rank approximations. This…
This paper investigates the performance of Newton's method, iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (iLQR), and Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) in solving discrete-time optimal control problems. We offer a unified perspective on these…
Robot design optimization, imitation learning and system identification share a common problem which requires optimization over robot or task parameters at the same time as optimizing the robot motion. To solve these problems, we can use…
We study stochastic motion planning problems which involve a controlled process, with possibly discontinuous sample paths, visiting certain subsets of the state-space while avoiding others in a sequential fashion. For this purpose, we first…
The paper develops the Adaptive Dynamic Programming Toolbox (ADPT), which solves optimal control problems for continuous-time nonlinear systems. Based on the adaptive dynamic programming technique, the ADPT computes optimal feedback…
We propose a novel methodology for solving a two-stage adjustable robust convex optimisation problem with a general (proximable) convex objective function and constraints defined by sum-of-squares (SOS) convex polynomials. These problems…
Autonomous agents are limited in their ability to observe the world state. Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) formally model the problem of planning under world state uncertainty, but POMDPs with continuous actions and…
Many contemporary signal processing, machine learning and wireless communication applications can be formulated as nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems. Often there is a lack of efficient algorithms for these problems, especially when…
Differential dynamic programming (DDP) is a direct single shooting method for trajectory optimization. Its efficiency derives from the exploitation of temporal structure (inherent to optimal control problems) and explicit…
In this paper, the optimization problem of the supervised distance preserving projection (SDPP) for data dimension reduction (DR) is considered, which is equivalent to a rank constrained least squares semidefinite programming (RCLSSDP). In…
In this paper we present a convergence rate analysis of inexact variants of several randomized iterative methods. Among the methods studied are: stochastic gradient descent, stochastic Newton, stochastic proximal point and stochastic…
Reinforcement learning based adaptive/approximate dynamic programming (ADP) is a powerful technique to determine an approximate optimal controller for a dynamical system. These methods bypass the need to analytically solve the nonlinear…
We consider a two-stage stochastic optimization problem, in which a long-term optimization variable is coupled with a set of short-term optimization variables in both objective and constraint functions. Despite that two-stage stochastic…