1,251 research outputs found
Conic Optimization Theory: Convexification Techniques and Numerical Algorithms
Optimization is at the core of control theory and appears in several areas of
this field, such as optimal control, distributed control, system
identification, robust control, state estimation, model predictive control and
dynamic programming. The recent advances in various topics of modern
optimization have also been revamping the area of machine learning. Motivated
by the crucial role of optimization theory in the design, analysis, control and
operation of real-world systems, this tutorial paper offers a detailed overview
of some major advances in this area, namely conic optimization and its emerging
applications. First, we discuss the importance of conic optimization in
different areas. Then, we explain seminal results on the design of hierarchies
of convex relaxations for a wide range of nonconvex problems. Finally, we study
different numerical algorithms for large-scale conic optimization problems.Comment: 18 page
Introducing Interior-Point Methods for Introductory Operations Research Courses and/or Linear Programming Courses
In recent years the introduction and development of Interior-Point Methods has had a profound impact on optimization theory as well as practice, influencing the field of Operations Research and related areas. Development of these methods has quickly led to the design of new and efficient optimization codes particularly for Linear Programming. Consequently, there has been an increasing need to introduce theory and methods of this new area in optimization into the appropriate undergraduate and first year graduate courses such as introductory Operations Research and/or Linear Programming courses, Industrial Engineering courses and Math Modeling courses. The objective of this paper is to discuss the ways of simplifying the introduction of Interior-Point Methods for students who have various backgrounds or who are not necessarily mathematics majors
OSQP: An Operator Splitting Solver for Quadratic Programs
We present a general-purpose solver for convex quadratic programs based on
the alternating direction method of multipliers, employing a novel operator
splitting technique that requires the solution of a quasi-definite linear
system with the same coefficient matrix at almost every iteration. Our
algorithm is very robust, placing no requirements on the problem data such as
positive definiteness of the objective function or linear independence of the
constraint functions. It can be configured to be division-free once an initial
matrix factorization is carried out, making it suitable for real-time
applications in embedded systems. In addition, our technique is the first
operator splitting method for quadratic programs able to reliably detect primal
and dual infeasible problems from the algorithm iterates. The method also
supports factorization caching and warm starting, making it particularly
efficient when solving parametrized problems arising in finance, control, and
machine learning. Our open-source C implementation OSQP has a small footprint,
is library-free, and has been extensively tested on many problem instances from
a wide variety of application areas. It is typically ten times faster than
competing interior-point methods, and sometimes much more when factorization
caching or warm start is used. OSQP has already shown a large impact with tens
of thousands of users both in academia and in large corporations
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