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In this work, we propose two derivative-free methods to address the problem of large-scale nonlinear equations with convex constraints. These algorithms satisfy the sufficient descent condition. The search directions can be considered…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Kabenge Hamiss , Mohammed M. Alshahrani , Mujahid N. Syed

We propose a Model Predictive Control (MPC) with a single-step prediction horizon to approximate the solution of infinite horizon optimal control problems with the expected sum of convex stage costs for constrained linear uncertain systems.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-24 Eunhyek Joa , Francesco Borrelli

In this contribution, we present a full overview of the continuous stochastic gradient (CSG) method, including convergence results, step size rules and algorithmic insights. We consider optimization problems in which the objective function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-23 Max Grieshammer , Lukas Pflug , Michael Stingl , Andrian Uihlein

In this paper, we consider an infinite horizon Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian control problem with controlled and costly measurements. A control strategy and a measurement strategy are co-designed to optimize the trade-off among control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-01-01 Yunhan Huang , Quanyan Zhu

We study a generalization of the classical discrete-time, Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control problem where the noise distributions affecting the states and observations are unknown and chosen adversarially from divergence-based…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Bahar Taşkesen , Dan A. Iancu , Çağıl Koçyiğit , Daniel Kuhn

The convergence of policy gradient algorithms hinges on the optimization landscape of the underlying optimal control problem. Theoretical insights into these algorithms can often be acquired from analyzing those of linear quadratic control.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-02 Jingliang Duan , Wenhan Cao , Yang Zheng , Lin Zhao

Consider a discrete-time Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) problem solved using policy gradient descent when the system matrices are unknown. The gradient is transmitted across a noisy channel over a finite time horizon using analog…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-22 Ashwin Verma , Aritra Mitra , Lintao Ye , Vijay Gupta

We propose a method for designing policies for convex stochastic control problems characterized by random linear dynamics and convex stage cost. We consider policies that employ quadratic approximate value functions as a substitute for the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-10 Alan Yang , Stephen Boyd

Stability is one of the most fundamental requirements for systems synthesis. In this paper, we address the stabilization problem for unknown linear systems via policy gradient (PG) methods. We leverage a key feature of PG for Linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-12-20 Feiran Zhao , Xingyun Fu , Keyou You

We introduce a continuous policy-value iteration algorithm where the approximations of the value function of a stochastic control problem and the optimal control are simultaneously updated through Langevin-type dynamics. This framework…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-11 Qi Feng , Gu Wang

The conjugate gradient (CG) method is an efficient iterative method for solving large-scale strongly convex quadratic programming (QP). In this paper we propose some generalized CG (GCG) methods for solving the $\ell_1$-regularized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-15 Zhaosong Lu , Xiaojun Chen

We study the problem of obtaining accurate policy gradient estimates using a finite number of samples. Monte-Carlo methods have been the default choice for policy gradient estimation, despite suffering from high variance in the gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-17 Akella Ravi Tej , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Anima Anandkumar , Yisong Yue

We consider infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes and study the convergence rates of the natural policy gradient (NPG) and the Q-NPG methods with the log-linear policy class. Using the compatible function approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Rui Yuan , Simon S. Du , Robert M. Gower , Alessandro Lazaric , Lin Xiao

This work addresses the finite-horizon robust covariance control problem for discrete-time, partially observable, linear system affected by random zero mean noise and deterministic but unknown disturbances restricted to lie in what is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-02 Georgios Kotsalis , Guanghui Lan , Arkadi Nemirovski

The paper is concerned with the coherent quantum Linear Quadratic Gaussian (CQLQG) control problem for time-varying quantum plants governed by linear quantum stochastic differential equations over a bounded time interval. A controller is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2012-05-21 Igor G. Vladimirov , Ian R. Petersen

This paper is concerned with coherent quantum linear quadratic Gaussian (CQLQG) control. The problem is to find a stabilizing measurement-free quantum controller for a quantum plant so as to minimize a mean square cost for the fully quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-09-27 Arash Kh. Sichani , Igor G. Vladimirov , Ian R. Petersen

Policy gradient (PG) methods have played an essential role in the empirical successes of reinforcement learning. In order to handle large state-action spaces, PG methods are typically used with function approximation. In this setting, the…

We introduce the receding-horizon policy gradient (RHPG) algorithm, the first PG algorithm with provable global convergence in learning the optimal linear estimator designs, i.e., the Kalman filter (KF). Notably, the RHPG algorithm does not…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-12 Xiangyuan Zhang , Saviz Mowlavi , Mouhacine Benosman , Tamer Başar

Direct policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning are a successful approach for a variety of reasons: they are model free, they directly optimize the performance metric of interest, and they allow for richly parameterized policies.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-14 Alekh Agarwal , Mikael Henaff , Sham Kakade , Wen Sun

Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control is a fundamental control paradigm that is studied in various fields such as engineering, computer science, economics, and neuroscience. It involves controlling a system with linear dynamics and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-02 Bahar Taşkesen , Dan A. Iancu , Çağıl Koçyiğit , Daniel Kuhn