Related papers: GuSTO: Guaranteed Sequential Trajectory Optimizati…
Real-time trajectory optimization for nonlinear constrained autonomous systems is critical and typically performed by CPU-based sequential solvers. Specifically, reliance on global sparse linear algebra or the serial nature of dynamic…
Many relevant problems in the area of systems and control, such as controller synthesis, observer design and model reduction, can be viewed as optimization problems involving dynamical systems: for instance, maximizing performance in the…
This article introduces a new transcription, change point localization, and mesh refinement scheme for direct optimization-based solutions and for uniform approximation of optimal control trajectories associated with a class of nonlinear…
A framework is introduced for sequentially solving convex stochastic minimization problems, where the objective functions change slowly, in the sense that the distance between successive minimizers is bounded. The minimization problems are…
Recent low-thrust space missions have highlighted the importance of designing trajectories that are robust against uncertainties. In its complete form, this process is formulated as a nonlinear constrained stochastic optimal control…
While Model Predictive Control (MPC) delivers strong performance across robotics applications, solving the underlying (batches of) nonlinear trajectory optimization (TO) problems online remains computationally demanding. Existing…
This paper presents novel method for distribution-free robust trajectory optimization and control of discrete-time, nonlinear, and non-Gaussian stochastic systems, with closed-loop guarantees on chance constraint satisfaction. Our framework…
Real-world environments are inherently uncertain, and to operate safely in these environments robots must be able to plan around this uncertainty. In the context of motion planning, we desire systems that can maintain an acceptable level of…
Trajectory optimization and posture generation are hard problems in robot locomotion, which can be non-convex and have multiple local optima. Progress on these problems is further hindered by a lack of open benchmarks, since comparisons of…
Many real-world systems often involve physical components or operating environments with highly nonlinear and uncertain dynamics. A number of different control algorithms can be used to design optimal controllers for such systems, assuming…
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…
Ensuring safety and driving consistency is a significant challenge for autonomous vehicles operating in partially observed environments. This work introduces a consistent parallel trajectory optimization (CPTO) approach to enable safe and…
Stochastic trajectory optimization methods like STOMP enable planning with non-differentiable costs, offering substantial flexibility over gradient-based approaches. We show that STOMP implicitly minimizes the KL divergence from a Boltzmann…
We address the application of stochastic optimization methods for the simultaneous control of parameter-dependent systems. In particular, we focus on the classical Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) approach of Robbins and Monro, and on the…
Gradient-based trajectory optimization (GTO) has gained wide popularity for quadrotor trajectory replanning. However, it suffers from local minima, which is not only fatal to safety but also unfavorable for smooth navigation. In this paper,…
This paper proposes real-time sequential convex programming (RTSCP), a method for solving a sequence of nonlinear optimization problems depending on an online parameter. We provide a contraction estimate for the proposed method and, as a…
This article introduces a numerical algorithm that serves as a preliminary step toward solving continuous-time model predictive control (MPC) problems directly without explicit time-discretization. The chief ingredients of the underlying…
Stochastic-gradient-based optimization has been a core enabling methodology in applications to large-scale problems in machine learning and related areas. Despite the progress, the gap between theory and practice remains significant, with…
Stochastic Approximation has been a prominent set of tools for solving problems with noise and uncertainty. Increasingly, it becomes important to solve optimization problems wherein there is noise in both a set of constraints that a…
This paper introduces a new algorithm for trajectory optimization, Decoupled Reduced-space and Adaptive Feasibility-repair Trajectory Optimization (DRAFTO). It first constructs a constrained objective that accounts for smoothness, safety,…