Particle algorithms for optimization on binary spaces

We discuss a unified approach to stochastic optimization of pseudo-Boolean objective functions based on particle methods, including the cross-entropy method and simulated annealing as special cases. We point out the need for auxiliary sampling distributions, that is parametric families on binary spaces, which are able to reproduce complex dependency structures, and illustrate their usefulness in our numerical experiments. We provide numerical evidence that particle-driven optimization algorithms based on parametric families yield superior results on strongly multi-modal optimization problems while local search heuristics outperform them on easier problems

Fast Non-Parametric Learning to Accelerate Mixed-Integer Programming for Online Hybrid Model Predictive Control

Today's fast linear algebra and numerical optimization tools have pushed the frontier of model predictive control (MPC) forward, to the efficient control of highly nonlinear and hybrid systems. The field of hybrid MPC has demonstrated that exact optimal control law can be computed, e.g., by mixed-integer programming (MIP) under piecewise-affine (PWA) system models. Despite the elegant theory, online solving hybrid MPC is still out of reach for many applications. We aim to speed up MIP by combining geometric insights from hybrid MPC, a simple-yet-effective learning algorithm, and MIP warm start techniques. Following a line of work in approximate explicit MPC, the proposed learning-control algorithm, LNMS, gains computational advantage over MIP at little cost and is straightforward for practitioners to implement

On Degeneracy Issues in Multi-parametric Programming and Critical Region Exploration based Distributed Optimization in Smart Grid Operations

Improving renewable energy resource utilization efficiency is crucial to reducing carbon emissions, and multi-parametric programming has provided a systematic perspective in conducting analysis and optimization toward this goal in smart grid operations. This paper focuses on two aspects of interest related to multi-parametric linear/quadratic programming (mpLP/QP). First, we study degeneracy issues of mpLP/QP. A novel approach to deal with degeneracies is proposed to find all critical regions containing the given parameter. Our method leverages properties of the multi-parametric linear complementary problem, vertex searching technique, and complementary basis enumeration. Second, an improved critical region exploration (CRE) method to solve distributed LP/QP is proposed under a general mpLP/QP-based formulation. The improved CRE incorporates the proposed approach to handle degeneracies. A cutting plane update and an adaptive stepsize scheme are also integrated to accelerate convergence under different problem settings. The computational efficiency is verified on multi-area tie-line scheduling problems with various testing benchmarks and initial states

Combinatorial persistency criteria for multicut and max-cut

In combinatorial optimization, partial variable assignments are called persistent if they agree with some optimal solution. We propose persistency criteria for the multicut and max-cut problem as well as fast combinatorial routines to verify them. The criteria that we derive are based on mappings that improve feasible multicuts, respectively cuts. Our elementary criteria can be checked enumeratively. The more advanced ones rely on fast algorithms for upper and lower bounds for the respective cut problems and max-flow techniques for auxiliary min-cut problems. Our methods can be used as a preprocessing technique for reducing problem sizes or for computing partial optimality guarantees for solutions output by heuristic solvers. We show the efficacy of our methods on instances of both problems from computer vision, biomedical image analysis and statistical physics