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In this paper we survey the primary research, both theoretical and applied, in the area of Robust Optimization (RO). Our focus is on the computational attractiveness of RO approaches, as well as the modeling power and broad applicability of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2010-10-27 Dimitris Bertsimas , David B. Brown , Constantine Caramanis

Recent work has demonstrated the promise of orchestrating large language models (LLMs) within evolutionary and agentic optimization systems. However, the mechanisms driving these optimization gains remain poorly understood. In this work, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Xinhao Zhang , Xi Chen , François Portet , Maxime Peyrard

Efficient motion planning algorithms are of central importance for deploying robots in the real world. Unfortunately, these algorithms often drastically reduce the dimensionality of the problem for the sake of feasibility, thereby foregoing…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-12-02 Alex Beaudin , Hsiu-Chin Lin

One approach for reducing run time and improving efficiency of machine learning is to reduce the convergence rate of the optimization algorithm used. Shuffling is an algorithm technique that is widely used in machine learning, but it only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-29 Yuetong Xu , Baharan Mirzasoleiman

Offline zero-shot reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn agents that optimize unseen reward functions without additional environment interaction. The standard approach to this problem trains task-conditioned policies by sampling task…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Nazim Bendib , Nicolas Perrin-Gilbert , Olivier Sigaud

We present a method for effectively planning the motion trajectory of robots in manufacturing tasks, the tool-paths of which are usually complex and have a large number of discrete-time constraints as waypoints. Kinematic redundancy also…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Chengkai Dai , Sylvain Lefebvre , Kai-Ming Yu , Jo M. P. Geraedts , Charlie C. L. Wang

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization, learning from finite differences of function evaluations without backpropagation, has recently regained attention in deep learning due to its memory efficiency and applicability to gray- or black-box…

The purpose of this text is to provide an accessible introduction to a set of recently developed algorithms for factorizing matrices. These new algorithms attain high practical speed by reducing the dimensionality of intermediate…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2019-02-08 Per-Gunnar Martinsson

Robotic systems are routinely used in the logistics industry to enhance operational efficiency, but the design of robot workspaces remains a complex and manual task, which limits the system's flexibility to changing demands. This paper aims…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-10 Peiyu Zeng , Yijiang Huang , Simon Huber , Stelian Coros

Trajectory Planning is a crucial word in Modern & Advanced Robotics. It's a way of generating a smooth and feasible path for the robot to follow over time. The process primarily takes several factors to generate the path, such as velocity,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-19 Arunabh Bora

Robust optimization over time (ROOT) refers to an optimization problem where its performance is evaluated over a period of future time. Most of the existing algorithms use particle swarm optimization combined with another method which…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2019-09-06 Lukáš Adam , Xin Yao

In this letter, we first propose a \underline{Z}eroth-\underline{O}rder c\underline{O}ordinate \underline{M}ethod~(ZOOM) to solve the stochastic optimization problem over a decentralized network with only zeroth-order~(ZO) oracle feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-11 Shengjun Zhang , Tan Shen , Hongwei Sun , Yunlong Dong , Dong Xie , Heng Zhang

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a gradient-free alternative to first-order (FO) methods by estimating gradients via finite differences of function evaluations, and has recently emerged as a memory-efficient paradigm for fine-tuning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Yicheng Lang , Changsheng Wang , Yihua Zhang , Mingyi Hong , Zheng Zhang , Wotao Yin , Sijia Liu

Direct collocation methods are powerful tools to solve trajectory optimization problems in robotics. While their resulting trajectories tend to be dynamically accurate, they may also present large kinematic errors in the case of constrained…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-04-26 Ricard Bordalba , Tobias Schoels , Lluís Ros , Josep M. Porta , Moritz Diehl

Optimization is a ubiquitous modeling tool and is often deployed in settings which repeatedly solve similar instances of the same problem. Amortized optimization methods use learning to predict the solutions to problems in these settings,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Brandon Amos

Motion trajectory planning is one crucial aspect for automated vehicles, as it governs the own future behavior in a dynamically changing environment. A good utilization of a vehicle's characteristics requires the consideration of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-07-31 Franz Gritschneder , Knut Graichen , Klaus Dietmayer

In the contemporary logistics industry, automation plays a pivotal role in enhancing production efficiency and expanding industrial scale. Autonomous mobile robots, in particular, have become integral to the modernization efforts in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-29 Tong Zhao , Xi Lin , Fang He , Hanwen Dai

As a core part of autonomous driving systems, motion planning has received extensive attention from academia and industry. However, real-time trajectory planning capable of spatial-temporal joint optimization is challenged by nonholonomic…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Zhichao Han , Yuwei Wu , Tong Li , Lu Zhang , Liuao Pei , Long Xu , Chengyang Li , Changjia Ma , Chao Xu , Shaojie Shen , Fei Gao

Gradient-free/zeroth-order methods for black-box convex optimization have been extensively studied in the last decade with the main focus on oracle calls complexity. In this paper, besides the oracle complexity, we focus also on iteration…

We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Michael Muehlebach , Michael I. Jordan