Related papers: Inequality Constrained Trajectory Optimization wit…
A classical approach for solving discrete time nonlinear control on a finite horizon consists in repeatedly minimizing linear quadratic approximations of the original problem around current candidate solutions. While widely popular in many…
Bipedal robots have received much attention because of the variety of motion maneuvers that they can produce, and the many applications they have in various areas including rehabilitation. One of these motion maneuvers is walking. In this…
A mixed linear quadratic (MLQ, for short) optimal control problem is considered. The controlled stochastic system consists of two diffusion processes which are in different time horizons. There are two control actions: a standard control…
Simplified models are useful to increase the computational efficiency of a motion planning algorithm, but their lack of accuracy have to be managed. We propose two feasibility constraints to be included in a Single Rigid Body Dynamicsbased…
Tools from control and dynamical systems have proven valuable for analyzing and developing optimization methods. In this paper, we establish rigorous theoretical foundations for using feedback linearization (FL) -- a well-established…
This work addresses the problem of risk-sensitive control for nonlinear systems with imperfect state observations, extending results for the linear case. In particular, we derive an algorithm that can compute local solutions with…
We present an optimization-based framework for multicopter trajectory planning subject to geometrical configuration constraints and user-defined dynamic constraints. The basis of the framework is a novel trajectory representation built upon…
Understanding the optimization landscape of linear quadratic regulation (LQR) problems is fundamental to the design of efficient reinforcement learning solutions. Recent work has made significant progress in characterizing the landscape of…
For unsupervised data-dependent hashing, the two most important requirements are to preserve similarity in the low-dimensional feature space and to minimize the binary quantization loss. A well-established hashing approach is Iterative…
In this paper we present Hybrid iterative Linear Quadratic Estimation (HiLQE), an optimization based offline state estimation algorithm for hybrid dynamical systems. We utilize the saltation matrix, a first order approximation of the…
Trajectory optimization is the core of modern model-based robotic control and motion planning. Existing trajectory optimizers, based on sequential quadratic programming (SQP) or differential dynamic programming (DDP), are often limited by…
We analyze the performance of policy gradient in multitask linear quadratic regulation (LQR), where the system and cost parameters differ across tasks. The main goal of multitask LQR is to find a controller with satisfactory performance on…
The continuous-time analysis of existing iterative algorithms for optimization has a long history. This work proposes a novel continuous-time control-theoretic framework for equality-constrained optimization. The key idea is to design a…
Motivated by robotic trajectory optimization problems we consider the Augmented Lagrangian approach to constrained optimization. We first propose an alternative augmentation of the Lagrangian to handle the inequality case (not based on…
This paper presents a chance-constrained formulation for robust trajectory optimization during manipulation. In particular, we present a chance-constrained optimization for Stochastic Discrete-time Linear Complementarity Systems (SDLCS). To…
Individual agents in a multi-agent system (MAS) may have decoupled open-loop dynamics, but a cooperative control objective usually results in coupled closed-loop dynamics thereby making the control design computationally expensive. The…
We introduce the lookahead-bounded Q-learning (LBQL) algorithm, a new, provably convergent variant of Q-learning that seeks to improve the performance of standard Q-learning in stochastic environments through the use of ``lookahead'' upper…
The convergence of policy gradient algorithms in reinforcement learning hinges on the optimization landscape of the underlying optimal control problem. Theoretical insights into these algorithms can often be acquired from analyzing those of…
Regularization and interior point approaches offer valuable perspectives to address constrained nonlinear optimization problems in view of control applications. This paper discusses the interactions between these techniques and proposes an…
The risk-neutral LQR controller is optimal for stochastic linear dynamical systems. However, the classical optimal controller performs inefficiently in the presence of low-probability yet statistically significant (risky) events. The…