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Non-linear Trajectory Optimisation (TO) methods require good initial guesses to converge to a locally optimal solution. A feasible guess can often be obtained by allocating a large amount of time for the trajectory to complete. However for…
Can we conclude the stability of an unknown dynamical system from the knowledge of a finite number of snapshots of trajectories? We tackle this black-box problem for switched linear systems. We show that, for any given random set of…
Topology optimization (TO) is a well-established methodology for structural design under user-defined constraints, e.g. minimum volume and maximum stiffness. However, such methods have traditionally been applied to static, deterministic…
We study first-order algorithms that are uniformly stable for empirical risk minimization (ERM) problems that are convex and smooth with respect to $p$-norms, $p \geq 1$. We propose a black-box reduction method that, by employing properties…
This paper considers an optimization problem for a dynamical system whose evolution depends on a collection of binary decision variables. We develop scalable approximation algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds to provide…
When optimizing real-time systems, designers often face a challenging problem where the schedulability constraints are non-convex, non-continuous, or lack an analytical form to understand their properties. Although the optimization…
Trajectory optimization (TO) is one of the most powerful tools for generating feasible motions for humanoid robots. However, including uncertainties and stochasticity in the TO problem to generate robust motions can easily lead to an…
Black-box optimization (BBO) involves functions that are unknown, inexact and/or expensive-to-evaluate. Existing BBO algorithms face several challenges, including high computational cost from extensive evaluations, difficulty in handling…
We present a novel probabilistic approach for optimal path experimental design. In this approach a discrete path optimization problem is defined on a static navigation mesh, and trajectories are modeled as random variables governed by a…
The linear programming (LP) approach has a long history in the theory of approximate dynamic programming. When it comes to computation, however, the LP approach often suffers from poor scalability. In this work, we introduce a relaxed…
Indirect trajectory optimization methods such as Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) have found considerable success when only planning under dynamic feasibility constraints. Meanwhile, nonlinear programming (NLP) has been the…
A robust-to-dynamics optimization (RDO) problem is an optimization problem specified by two pieces of input: (i) a mathematical program (an objective function $f:\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ and a feasible set…
This work studies the design of safe control policies for large-scale non-linear systems operating in uncertain environments. In such a case, the robust control framework is a principled approach to safety that aims to maximize the…
In this paper, we propose a Feasible Sequential Linear Programming (FSLP) algorithm applied to time-optimal control problems (TOCP) obtained through direct multiple shooting discretization. This method is motivated by TOCP with nonlinear…
Robust optimization(RO) is an important tool for handling optimization problem with uncertainty. The main objective of RO is to solve optimization problems due to uncertainty associated with constraints satisfying all realizations of…
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…
The performance of many algorithms in the fields of hard combinatorial problem solving, machine learning or AI in general depends on tuned hyperparameter configurations. Automated methods have been proposed to alleviate users from the…
This paper presents a novel algorithm for the continuous control of dynamical systems that combines Trajectory Optimization (TO) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) in a single framework. The motivations behind this algorithm are the two main…
The Neural Network (NN), as a black-box function approximator, has been considered in many control and robotics applications. However, difficulties in verifying the overall system safety in the presence of uncertainties hinder the…
Topology optimization (TO) can be viewed as seeking an optimal solution in the design space of a given TO problem. For weakly non-linear TO problems, e.g., compliance minimization, sensitivity-based methods typically converge well, whereas…