Related papers: Safe non-smooth black-box optimization with applic…
We consider the problem of safely coordinating ensembles of identical autonomous agents to conduct complex missions with conflicting safety requirements and under noisy control inputs. Using non-smooth control barrier functions (CBFs) and…
We investigate the convergence properties of a class of iterative algorithms designed to minimize a potentially non-smooth and noisy objective function, which may be algebraically intractable and whose values may be obtained as the output…
We consider non-smooth saddle point optimization problems. To solve these problems, we propose a zeroth-order method under bounded or Lipschitz continuous noise, possible adversarial. In contrast to the state-of-the-art algorithms, our…
Structured optimization problems are ubiquitous in fields like data science and engineering. The goal in structured optimization is using a prescribed set of points, called atoms, to build up a solution that minimizes or maximizes a given…
This work introduces the StoMADS-PB algorithm for constrained stochastic blackbox optimization, which is an extension of the mesh adaptive direct-search (MADS) method originally developed for deterministic blackbox optimization under…
This paper presents a constrained iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (iLQR) framework for nonlinear optimal control problems with box constraints on both states and control inputs. We incorporate logarithmic barrier functions into the…
We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…
This work aims to solve a stochastic nonconvex nonsmooth composite optimization problem. Previous works on composite optimization problem requires the major part to satisfy Lipschitz smoothness or some relaxed smoothness conditions, which…
We consider quantile optimization of black-box functions that are estimated with noise. We propose two new iterative three-timescale local search algorithms. The first algorithm uses an appropriately modified finite-difference-based…
We study how to safely control nonlinear control-affine systems that are corrupted with bounded non-stochastic noise, i.e., noise that is unknown a priori and that is not necessarily governed by a stochastic model. We focus on safety…
We study the safe reinforcement learning problem with nonlinear function approximation, where policy optimization is formulated as a constrained optimization problem with both the objective and the constraint being nonconvex functions. For…
This paper considers global optimization with a black-box unknown objective function that can be non-convex and non-differentiable. Such a difficult optimization problem arises in many real-world applications, such as parameter tuning in…
In recent years, solving optimization problems involving black-box simulators has become a point of focus for the machine learning community due to their ubiquity in science and engineering. The simulators describe a forward process…
In this paper we consider non-smooth convex optimization problems with (possibly) infinite intersection of constraints. In contrast to the classical approach, where the constraints are usually represented as intersection of simple sets,…
This paper considers minimax optimization $\min_x \max_y f(x, y)$ in the challenging setting where $f$ can be both nonconvex in $x$ and nonconcave in $y$. Though such optimization problems arise in many machine learning paradigms including…
In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the average of a large number of nonsmooth and convex functions. Such problems often arise in typical machine learning problems as empirical risk minimization, but are computationally…
In this study, we investigate the problem of min-max continuous optimization in a black-box setting $\min_{x} \max_{y}f(x,y)$. A popular approach updates $x$ and $y$ simultaneously or alternatingly. However, two major limitations have been…
The problem of searching for an unknown object occurs in important applications ranging from security, medicine and defense. Sensors with the capability to process information rapidly require adaptive algorithms to control their search in…
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…
This paper studies noisy low-rank matrix completion: given partial and noisy entries of a large low-rank matrix, the goal is to estimate the underlying matrix faithfully and efficiently. Arguably one of the most popular paradigms to tackle…