Related papers: Nonsmooth optimal value and policy functions in me…

Recently, the centroidal momentum dynamics has received substantial attention to plan dynamically consistent motions for robots with arms and legs in multi-contact scenarios. However, it is also non convex which renders any optimization…

Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…

Snapping instabilities in soft structures offer a powerful pathway to achieve rapid and energy-efficient actuation. In this study, an eccentric dome-shaped snapping actuator is developed to generate controllable asymmetric motion through…

Existence of optimal solutions and necessary optimality conditions for a controlled version of Moreau's sweeping process are derived. The control is a measurable ingredient of the dynamics and the constraint set is a polyhedron. The novelty…

Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…

The hybrid optimal control problem with reach time to a target set is addressed and the continuity and uniqueness of the associated value function is proved. Hybrid systems involves interaction of different types of dynamics: continuous and…

We present a theoretical study of the optimal control of a qubit interacting with a structured environment. We consider a model system in which the bath is a bosonic reservoir at zero temperature and the qubit frequency is the only control…

Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees -…

We present a reformulation of a contact-implicit optimization (CIO) approach that computes optimal trajectories for rigid-body systems in contact-rich settings. A hard-contact model is assumed, and the unilateral constraints are imposed in…

In this paper, we propose a new policy iteration algorithm to compute the value function and the optimal controls of continuous time stochastic control problems. The algorithm relies on successive approximations using linear-quadratic…

Variational inequalities are an important mathematical tool for modelling free boundary problems that arise in different application areas. Due to the intricate nonsmooth structure of the resulting models, their analysis and optimization is…

We study stochastic optimal control problems for (possibly degenerate) McKean-Vlasov controlled diffusions and obtain discrete-time as well as finite interacting particle approximations. (i) Under mild assumptions, we first prove the…

Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…

Trajectory optimization is a fundamental stochastic optimal control problem. This paper deals with a trajectory optimization approach for dynamical systems subject to measurement noise that can be fitted into linear time-varying stochastic…

Direct collocation methods are powerful tools to solve trajectory optimization problems in robotics. While their resulting trajectories tend to be dynamically accurate, they may also present large kinematic errors in the case of constrained…

Practical deployments of coordinated fleets of mobile robots in different environments have revealed the benefits of maintaining small distances between robots, especially as they move at higher speeds. However, this is counter-intuitive in…

Adaptive optimal control using value iteration (VI) initiated from a stabilizing policy is theoretically analyzed in various aspects including the continuity of the result, the stability of the system operated using any single/constant…

We study a class of optimal control problems governed by nonlinear stochastic equations of monotone type under certain coercivity and linear growth conditions. We give first order necessary conditions of optimality. A stochastic Pontryagin…

In this paper, we study the optimal singular controls for stochastic recursive systems, in which the control has two components: the regular control, and the singular control. Under certain assumptions, we establish the dynamic programming…

This paper addresses the problem of optimal control of robotic sensing systems aimed at autonomous information gathering in scenarios such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and surveillance and reconnaissance. The information…