Related papers: A Modified Method of Successive Approximations for…
The classical Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative method for solving stochastic control problems and is derived from Pontryagin's optimality principle. It is known that the MSA may fail to converge. Using careful…
The Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is a fixed-point iterative method used to solve stochastic optimal control problems. It is an indirect method based on the conditions derived from the Stochastic Maximum Principle (SMP), an…
This paper focuses on finding approximate solutions to stochastic optimal control problems with control domains being not necessarily convex, where the state trajectory is subject to controlled stochastic differential equations. The…
The modified Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) is an iterative scheme for approximating solutions to stochastic control problems in continuous time based on Pontryagin Optimality Principle which, starting with an initial open loop…
We consider stochastic optimization problems with non-convex functional constraints, such as those arising in trajectory generation, sparse approximation, and robust classification. To this end, we put forth a recursive momentum-based…
Strongly contracting dynamical systems have numerous properties (e.g., incremental ISS), find widespread applications (e.g., in controls and learning), and their study is receiving increasing attention. This work starts with the simple…
This paper applies the Method of Successive Approximations (MSA) based on Pontryagin's principle to solve optimal control problems with state constraints for semilinear parabolic equations. Error estimates for the first and second…
Stochastic approximation with multiple coupled sequences (MSA) has found broad applications in machine learning as it encompasses a rich class of problems including bilevel optimization (BLO), multi-level compositional optimization (MCO),…
This work considers the decentralized successive convex approximation (SCA) method for minimizing stochastic non-convex objectives subject to convex constraints, along with possibly non-smooth convex regularizers. Although SCA has been…
This paper presents a stochastic approximation proximal subgradient (SAPS) method for stochastic convex-concave minimax optimization. By accessing unbiased and variance bounded approximate subgradients, we show that this algorithm exhibits…
In this paper, we study two kinds of singular optimal controls (SOCs for short) problems where the systems governed by forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs for short), in which the control has two components: the…
Many machine learning and optimization algorithms can be cast as instances of stochastic approximation (SA). The convergence rate of these algorithms is known to be slow, with the optimal mean squared error (MSE) of order $O(n^{-1})$. In…
One key challenge for solving a general stochastic optimization problem with expectations in the objective and constraint functions using ordinary stochastic iterative methods lies in the infeasibility issue caused by the randomness over…
In this paper, we study the maximum principle for stochastic optimal control problems of forward-backward stochastic difference systems (FBS{\Delta}Ss). Two types of FBS{\Delta}Ss are investigated. The first one is described by a partially…
In this paper, we propose a new methodology for state constrained stochastic optimal control (SOC) problems. The solution is based on past work in solving SOC problems using forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDE). Our…
A number of optimal decision problems with uncertainty can be formulated into a stochastic optimal control framework. The Least-Squares Monte Carlo (LSMC) algorithm is a popular numerical method to approach solutions of such stochastic…
This paper develops a comprehensive framework for optimal control of systems governed by fractional backward stochastic evolution equations (FBSEEs) in Hilbert spaces. We first establish a stochastic maximum principle (SMP) as a necessary…
The existence of multiple irregular obstacles in the environment introduces nonconvex constraints into the optimization for motion planning, which makes the optimal control problem hard to handle. One efficient approach to address this…
In this paper, we consider a class of stochastic optimal control problems with risk constraints that are expressed as bounded probabilities of failure for particular initial states. We present here a martingale approach that diffuses a risk…
We study a stochastic optimal control problem for forward-backward control systems with quadratic generators. In order to establish the first and second-order variational and adjoint equations, we obtain a new estimate for one-dimensional…