Related papers: An exact dynamic programming algorithm, lower and …
The use of convex relaxations has lately gained considerable interest in Power Systems. These relaxations play a major role in providing global optimality guarantees for non-convex optimization problems. For the Optimal Power Flow (OPF)…
This paper considers a general class of iterative optimization algorithms, referred to as linear-optimization-based convex programming (LCP) methods, for solving large-scale convex programming (CP) problems. The LCP methods, covering the…
We present FilterDDP, a differential dynamic programming algorithm for solving discrete-time, optimal control problems (OCPs) with nonlinear equality constraints. Unlike prior methods based on merit functions or the augmented Lagrangian…
We study the problem of high-dimensional robust mean estimation in the presence of a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. A recent line of work has provided sophisticated polynomial-time algorithms for this problem with…
The framework of Integral Quadratic Constraints of Lessard et al. (2014) reduces the computation of upper bounds on the convergence rate of several optimization algorithms to semi-definite programming (SDP). Followup work by Nishihara et…
We are interested in optimally controlling a discrete time dynamical system that can be influenced by exogenous uncertainties. This is generally called a Stochas-tic Optimal Control (SOC) problem and the Dynamic Programming (DP) principle…
We study the problem of learning a linear model to set the reserve price in an auction, given contextual information, in order to maximize expected revenue from the seller side. First, we show that it is not possible to solve this problem…
We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…
An optimization algorithm for nonsmooth nonconvex constrained optimization problems with upper-C2 objective functions is proposed and analyzed. Upper-C2 is a weakly concave property that exists in difference of convex (DC) functions and…
We revisit the deadline version of the discrete time-cost tradeoff problem for the special case of bounded depth. Such instances occur for example in VLSI design. The depth of an instance is the number of jobs in a longest chain and is…
We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a risk measure of variability in cost, under the risk-aware MDPs paradigm. Previous studies showed that risk-aware MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handling risk, can be…
The idea of dynamic programming (DP), proposed by Bellman in the 1950s, is one of the most important algorithmic techniques. However, in parallel, many fundamental and sequentially simple problems become more challenging, and open to a…
Neuro-dynamic programming is a class of powerful techniques for approximating the solution to dynamic programming equations. In their most computationally attractive formulations, these techniques provide the approximate solution only…
A longstanding problem related to floating-point implementation of numerical programs is to provide efficient yet precise analysis of output errors. We present a framework to compute lower bounds on largest absolute roundoff errors, for a…
The principle of optimality is a fundamental aspect of dynamic programming, which states that the optimal solution to a dynamic optimization problem can be found by combining the optimal solutions to its sub-problems. While this principle…
In this paper we present a finite element method for the direct transcription of constrained non-linear optimal control problems. We prove that our method converges of high order under mild assumptions. Our analysis uses a regularized…
We use the technique of information relaxation to develop a duality-driven iterative approach to obtaining and improving confidence interval estimates for the true value of finite-horizon stochastic dynamic programming problems. We show…
We consider a class of relaxation problems mixing slow and fast variations which can describe population dynamics models or hyperbolic systems, with varying stiffness (from non-stiff to strongly dissipative), and develop a multi-scale…
We study the set of solutions to a parameterized, strongly convex optimization problem whose cost depends on uncertain, bounded parameters. We compute a certified outer approximation of the corresponding set of optimizers, using convergence…
In this paper, we solve a maximization problem where the objective function is quadratic and convex or concave and the constraints set is the reachable value set of a convergent discrete-time affine system. Moreover, we assume that the…