Related papers: A Convex Formulation of the Soft-Capture Problem
Soft robots can safely interact with environments because of their mechanical compliance. Self-collision is also employed in the modern design of soft robots to enhance their performance during different tasks. However, developing an…
Recently, the centroidal momentum dynamics has received substantial attention to plan dynamically consistent motions for robots with arms and legs in multi-contact scenarios. However, it is also non convex which renders any optimization…
Space mission design places a premium on cost and operational efficiency. The search for new science and life beyond Earth calls for spacecraft that can deliver scientific payloads to geologically rich yet hazardous landing sites. At the…
This paper presents a novel contact-implicit trajectory optimization method using an analytically solvable contact model to enable planning of interactions with hard, soft, and slippery environments. Specifically, we propose a novel contact…
This paper presents a convex programming approach to the optimization of a multistage launch vehicle ascent trajectory, from the liftoff to the payload injection into the target orbit, taking into account multiple nonconvex constraints,…
Optimal control problems with discrete-valued inputs are inherently challenging due to their mixed-integer nature, rendering them generally intractable for real-time, safety-critical aerospace applications. Lossless convexification offers a…
A typical manipulation task consists of a manipulator equipped with a gripper to grasp and move an object with constraints on the motion of the hand-held object, which may be due to the nature of the task itself or from object-environment…
Aerial vehicles have recently attracted significant attention in a variety of commercial and civilian applications due to their high mobility, flexible deployment and cost-effectiveness. To leverage these promising features, the aerial…
This article is devoted to one particular case of using universal accelerated proximal envelopes to obtain computationally efficient accelerated versions of methods used to solve various optimization problem setups. In this paper, we…
We present a novel method for global motion planning of robotic systems that interact with the environment through contacts. Our method directly handles the hybrid nature of such tasks using tools from convex optimization. We formulate the…
In this paper, we introduce a novel deep learning based solution to the Powered-Descent Guidance (PDG) problem, grounded in principles of nonlinear Stochastic Optimal Control (SOC) and Feynman-Kac theory. Our algorithm solves the PDG…
We propose a continuous feedback control strategy that steers a point-mass vehicle safely to a destination, in a quasi-optimal manner, in sphere worlds. The main idea consists in avoiding each obstacle via the shortest path on the cone's…
In this paper, we employ successive convexification to solve the minimum-time 6-DoF rocket powered landing problem. The contribution of this paper is the development and demonstration of a free-final-time problem formulation that can be…
To overcome the limitations of current parafoil precision landing capabilities, an efficient real-time convex optimized guidance and control strategy is presented. Successive convexification of the parafoil guidance problem guarantees local…
We present a convex formulation of compliant frictional contact and a robust, performant method to solve it in practice. By analytically eliminating contact constraints, we obtain an unconstrained convex problem. Our solver has proven…
We present an algorithm to perform fuel-optimal stationkeeping for spacecraft in unstable halo orbits with additional constraints to ensure safety in the event of a control failure. We formulate a convex trajectory-optimization problem to…
We develop an autonomous navigation algorithm for a robot operating in two-dimensional environments cluttered with obstacles having arbitrary convex shapes. The proposed navigation approach relies on a hybrid feedback to guarantee global…
This paper presents a numerical optimization algorithm for generating approach and landing trajectories for a six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) aircraft. We improve on the existing research on aircraft landing trajectory generation by…
We consider the task of decentralized minimization of the sum of smooth strongly convex functions stored across the nodes of a network. For this problem, lower bounds on the number of gradient computations and the number of communication…
This work proposes an algorithm to bound the minimum distance between points on trajectories of a dynamical system and points on an unsafe set. Prior work on certifying safety of trajectories includes barrier and density methods, which do…