Related papers: An Introduction to Zero-Order Optimization Techniq…
Zeroth-order optimization methods are developed to overcome the practical hurdle of having knowledge of explicit derivatives. Instead, these schemes work with merely access to noisy functions evaluations. One of the predominant approaches…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is a subset of gradient-free optimization that emerges in many signal processing and machine learning applications. It is used for solving optimization problems similarly to gradient-based methods. However, it…
Zero-order optimization has recently received significant attention for designing optimal trajectories and policies for robotic systems. However, most existing methods (e.g., MPPI, CEM, and CMA-ES) are local in nature, as they rely on…
Zeroth-order methods are extensively used in machine learning applications where gradients are infeasible or expensive to compute, such as black-box attacks, reinforcement learning, and language model fine-tuning. Existing optimization…
We propose a novel zeroth-order optimization algorithm based on an efficient sampling strategy. Under mild global regularity conditions on the objective function, we establish non-asymptotic convergence rates for the proposed method.…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization with ordinal feedback has emerged as a fundamental problem in modern machine learning systems, particularly in human-in-the-loop settings such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference…
In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning-based algorithm for trajectory optimization for constrained dynamical systems. This problem is motivated by the fact that for most robotic systems, the dynamics may not always be known.…
Rank-based zeroth-order (ZO) optimization -- which relies only on the ordering of function evaluations -- offers strong robustness to noise and monotone transformations, and underlies many successful algorithms such as CMA-ES, natural…
In this paper, we formalise order-robust optimisation as an instance of online learning minimising simple regret, and propose Vroom, a zero'th order optimisation algorithm capable of achieving vanishing regret in non-stationary…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is popular in real-world applications that accessing the gradient information is expensive or unavailable. Recently, adaptive ZO methods that normalize gradient estimators by the empirical standard deviation…
This paper introduces a class of model-free feedback methods for solving generic constrained optimization problems where the specific mathematical forms of the objective and constraint functions are not available. The proposed methods,…
In both industrial and service domains, a central benefit of the use of robots is their ability to quickly and reliably execute repetitive tasks. However, even relatively simple peg-in-hole tasks are typically subject to stochastic…
We consider the problem of minimizing a high-dimensional objective function, which may include a regularization term, using (possibly noisy) evaluations of the function. Such optimization is also called derivative-free, zeroth-order, or…
We propose a novel method for multi-objective motion planning problems by leveraging the paradigm of lexicographic optimization and applying it for the first time to graph search over probabilistic roadmaps. The competing resources of…
Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) has been a powerful framework for solving black-box problems, which estimates gradients using zeroth-order data to update variables iteratively. The practical applicability of ZO critically depends on the…
Algorithm design is a laborious process and often requires many iterations of ideation and validation. In this paper, we explore automating algorithm design and present a method to learn an optimization algorithm, which we believe to be the…
We deal with the problem of planning collision-free trajectories for robots operating in a shared space. Given the start and destination position for each of the robots, the task is to find trajectories for all robots that reach their…
Motion planning for multi-jointed robots is challenging. Due to the inherent complexity of the problem, most existing works decompose motion planning as easier subproblems. However, because of the inconsistent performance metrics, only…
We study novel robust zero-order algorithms with acceleration for the solution of real-time optimization problems. In particular, we propose a family of extremum seeking dynamics that can be universally modeled as singularly perturbed…
Recent breakthroughs both in reinforcement learning and trajectory optimization have made significant advances towards real world robotic system deployment. Reinforcement learning (RL) can be applied to many problems without needing any…