Related papers: Pontryagin-Bellman Differential Dynamic Programmin…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) finds extensive application in autonomous drone navigation within complex, high-risk environments. However, its practical deployment faces a safety-exploration dilemma: soft penalty mechanisms encourage…
This paper investigates the performance of Newton's method, iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (iLQR), and Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) in solving discrete-time optimal control problems. We offer a unified perspective on these…
Many contemporary signal processing, machine learning and wireless communication applications can be formulated as nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems. Often there is a lack of efficient algorithms for these problems, especially when…
An efficient method for solving large nonlinear problems combines Newton solvers and Domain Decomposition Methods (DDM). In the DDM framework, the boundary conditions can be chosen to be primal, dual or mixed. The mixed approach presents…
The design of an automated vehicle controller can be generally formulated into an optimal control problem. This paper proposes a continuous-time finite-horizon approximate dynamicprogramming (ADP) method, which can synthesis off-line…
Optimal damping aims at determining a vector of damping coefficients $\nu$ that maximizes the decay rate of a mechanical system's response. This problem can be formulated as the minimization of the trace of the solution of a Lyapunov…
In this paper we introduce a new procedure to solve nonlinear optimal control problems with delays which exploits indirect methods combined with numerical homotopy procedures. It is known that solving this kind of problems via indirect…
Most value-based and actor--critic reinforcement learning methods rely on Bellman-style recursions, yet these recursions collapse under non-exponential discounting common in human preferences and survival processes. We show the breakdown is…
This paper proposes D-ripALM, a Decentralized relative-type inexact proximal Augmented Lagrangian Method for consensus convex optimization over multi-agent networks. D-ripALM adopts a double-loop distributed optimization framework that…
An interior-point algorithm framework is proposed, analyzed, and tested for solving nonlinearly constrained continuous optimization problems. The main setting of interest is when the objective and constraint functions may be nonlinear…
In this paper, we consider a class of continuous-time, continuous-space stochastic optimal control problems. Building upon recent advances in Markov chain approximation methods and sampling-based algorithms for deterministic path planning,…
This paper addresses the challenge of accommodating nonlinear dynamics and constraints in rapid trajectory optimization, envisioned for use in the context of onboard guidance. We present a novel framework that uniquely employs…
In this paper we define an infinite-dimensional controlled piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP) and we study an optimal control problem with finite time horizon and unbounded cost. This process is a coupling between a continuous…
In this paper, we study multistage stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MS-MINLP). This general class of problems encompasses, as important special cases, multistage stochastic convex optimization with non-Lipschitzian value…
In this paper, we consider the problem of minimum-time optimal control for a dynamical system with initial state uncertainties and propose a sequential convex programming (SCP) solution framework. We seek to minimize the expected terminal…
Imaging tasks are typically tackled using a structured optimization framework. This paper delves into a class of algorithms for difference-of-convex (DC) structured optimization, focusing on minimizing a DC function along with a possibly…
We study a combined optimal control/stopping problem under a nonlinear expectation ${\cal E}^f$ induced by a BSDE with jumps, in a Markovian framework. The terminal reward function is only supposed to be Borelian. The value function $u$…
Obstacle avoidance of polytopic obstacles by polytopic robots is a challenging problem in optimization-based control and trajectory planning. Many existing methods rely on smooth geometric approximations, such as hyperspheres or ellipsoids,…
Closed-loop optimal control design for high-dimensional nonlinear systems has been a long-standing challenge. Traditional methods, such as solving the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, suffer from the curse of dimensionality.…
Optimal control problems are usually addressed with the help of the famous Pontryagin Maximum Principle (PMP) which gives a generalization of the classical Euler-Lagrange and Weierstrass necessary optimality conditions of the calculus of…