50 research outputs found
Convex inner approximations of nonconvex semialgebraic sets applied to fixed-order controller design
We describe an elementary algorithm to build convex inner approximations of
nonconvex sets. Both input and output sets are basic semialgebraic sets given
as lists of defining multivariate polynomials. Even though no optimality
guarantees can be given (e.g. in terms of volume maximization for bounded
sets), the algorithm is designed to preserve convex boundaries as much as
possible, while removing regions with concave boundaries. In particular, the
algorithm leaves invariant a given convex set. The algorithm is based on
Gloptipoly 3, a public-domain Matlab package solving nonconvex polynomial
optimization problems with the help of convex semidefinite programming
(optimization over linear matrix inequalities, or LMIs). We illustrate how the
algorithm can be used to design fixed-order controllers for linear systems,
following a polynomial approach
Simple Approximations of Semialgebraic Sets and their Applications to Control
Many uncertainty sets encountered in control systems analysis and design can
be expressed in terms of semialgebraic sets, that is as the intersection of
sets described by means of polynomial inequalities. Important examples are for
instance the solution set of linear matrix inequalities or the Schur/Hurwitz
stability domains. These sets often have very complicated shapes (non-convex,
and even non-connected), which renders very difficult their manipulation. It is
therefore of considerable importance to find simple-enough approximations of
these sets, able to capture their main characteristics while maintaining a low
level of complexity. For these reasons, in the past years several convex
approximations, based for instance on hyperrect-angles, polytopes, or
ellipsoids have been proposed. In this work, we move a step further, and
propose possibly non-convex approximations , based on a small volume polynomial
superlevel set of a single positive polynomial of given degree. We show how
these sets can be easily approximated by minimizing the L1 norm of the
polynomial over the semialgebraic set, subject to positivity constraints.
Intuitively, this corresponds to the trace minimization heuristic commonly
encounter in minimum volume ellipsoid problems. From a computational viewpoint,
we design a hierarchy of linear matrix inequality problems to generate these
approximations, and we provide theoretically rigorous convergence results, in
the sense that the hierarchy of outer approximations converges in volume (or,
equivalently, almost everywhere and almost uniformly) to the original set. Two
main applications of the proposed approach are considered. The first one aims
at reconstruction/approximation of sets from a finite number of samples. In the
second one, we show how the concept of polynomial superlevel set can be used to
generate samples uniformly distributed on a given semialgebraic set. The
efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated by different numerical
examples
A hierarchy of LMI inner approximations of the set of stable polynomials
Exploiting spectral properties of symmetric banded Toeplitz matrices, we
describe simple sufficient conditions for positivity of a trigonometric
polynomial formulated as linear matrix inequalities (LMI) in the coefficients.
As an application of these results, we derive a hierarchy of convex LMI inner
approximations (affine sections of the cone of positive definite matrices of
size ) of the nonconvex set of Schur stable polynomials of given degree . It is shown that when tends to infinity the hierarchy converges to a
lifted LMI approximation (projection of an LMI set defined in a lifted space of
dimension quadratic in ) already studied in the technical literature
Model-based and data-based frequency domain design of fixed structure robust controller: a polynomial optimization approach
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Classical and strong convexity of sublevel sets and application to attainable sets of nonlinear systems
Necessary and sufficient conditions for convexity and strong convexity,
respectively, of sublevel sets that are defined by finitely many real-valued
-maps are presented. A novel characterization of strongly convex sets
in terms of the so-called local quadratic support is proved. The results
concerning strong convexity are used to derive sufficient conditions for
attainable sets of continuous-time nonlinear systems to be strongly convex. An
application of these conditions is a novel method to over-approximate
attainable sets when strong convexity is present.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure
Improving Efficiency and Scalability of Sum of Squares Optimization: Recent Advances and Limitations
It is well-known that any sum of squares (SOS) program can be cast as a
semidefinite program (SDP) of a particular structure and that therein lies the
computational bottleneck for SOS programs, as the SDPs generated by this
procedure are large and costly to solve when the polynomials involved in the
SOS programs have a large number of variables and degree. In this paper, we
review SOS optimization techniques and present two new methods for improving
their computational efficiency. The first method leverages the sparsity of the
underlying SDP to obtain computational speed-ups. Further improvements can be
obtained if the coefficients of the polynomials that describe the problem have
a particular sparsity pattern, called chordal sparsity. The second method
bypasses semidefinite programming altogether and relies instead on solving a
sequence of more tractable convex programs, namely linear and second order cone
programs. This opens up the question as to how well one can approximate the
cone of SOS polynomials by second order representable cones. In the last part
of the paper, we present some recent negative results related to this question.Comment: Tutorial for CDC 201
A Sums-of-Squares Extension of Policy Iterations
In order to address the imprecision often introduced by widening operators in
static analysis, policy iteration based on min-computations amounts to
considering the characterization of reachable value set of a program as an
iterative computation of policies, starting from a post-fixpoint. Computing
each policy and the associated invariant relies on a sequence of numerical
optimizations. While the early research efforts relied on linear programming
(LP) to address linear properties of linear programs, the current state of the
art is still limited to the analysis of linear programs with at most quadratic
invariants, relying on semidefinite programming (SDP) solvers to compute
policies, and LP solvers to refine invariants.
We propose here to extend the class of programs considered through the use of
Sums-of-Squares (SOS) based optimization. Our approach enables the precise
analysis of switched systems with polynomial updates and guards. The analysis
presented has been implemented in Matlab and applied on existing programs
coming from the system control literature, improving both the range of
analyzable systems and the precision of previously handled ones.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figure