37 research outputs found
Curse of dimensionality reduction in max-plus based approximation methods: theoretical estimates and improved pruning algorithms
Max-plus based methods have been recently developed to approximate the value
function of possibly high dimensional optimal control problems. A critical step
of these methods consists in approximating a function by a supremum of a small
number of functions (max-plus "basis functions") taken from a prescribed
dictionary. We study several variants of this approximation problem, which we
show to be continuous versions of the facility location and -center
combinatorial optimization problems, in which the connection costs arise from a
Bregman distance. We give theoretical error estimates, quantifying the number
of basis functions needed to reach a prescribed accuracy. We derive from our
approach a refinement of the curse of dimensionality free method introduced
previously by McEneaney, with a higher accuracy for a comparable computational
cost.Comment: 8pages 5 figure
Bundle-based pruning in the max-plus curse of dimensionality free method
Recently a new class of techniques termed the max-plus curse of
dimensionality-free methods have been developed to solve nonlinear optimal
control problems. In these methods the discretization in state space is avoided
by using a max-plus basis expansion of the value function. This requires
storing only the coefficients of the basis functions used for representation.
However, the number of basis functions grows exponentially with respect to the
number of time steps of propagation to the time horizon of the control problem.
This so called "curse of complexity" can be managed by applying a pruning
procedure which selects the subset of basis functions that contribute most to
the approximation of the value function. The pruning procedures described thus
far in the literature rely on the solution of a sequence of high dimensional
optimization problems which can become computationally expensive.
In this paper we show that if the max-plus basis functions are linear and the
region of interest in state space is convex, the pruning problem can be
efficiently solved by the bundle method. This approach combining the bundle
method and semidefinite formulations is applied to the quantum gate synthesis
problem, in which the state space is the special unitary group (which is
non-convex). This is based on the observation that the convexification of the
unitary group leads to an exact relaxation. The results are studied and
validated via examples
Tropical Kraus maps for optimal control of switched systems
Kraus maps (completely positive trace preserving maps) arise classically in
quantum information, as they describe the evolution of noncommutative
probability measures. We introduce tropical analogues of Kraus maps, obtained
by replacing the addition of positive semidefinite matrices by a multivalued
supremum with respect to the L\"owner order. We show that non-linear
eigenvectors of tropical Kraus maps determine piecewise quadratic
approximations of the value functions of switched optimal control problems.
This leads to a new approximation method, which we illustrate by two
applications: 1) approximating the joint spectral radius, 2) computing
approximate solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi PDE arising from a class of switched
linear quadratic problems studied previously by McEneaney. We report numerical
experiments, indicating a major improvement in terms of scalability by
comparison with earlier numerical schemes, owing to the "LMI-free" nature of
our method.Comment: 15 page
Maximizing concave piecewise affine functions on the unitary group
International audienceWe show that a convex relaxation, introduced by Sridharan, McEneaney, Gu and James to approximate the value function of an optimal controlproblem arising from quantum gate synthesis, is exact. This relaxation appliesto the maximization of a class of concave piecewise affine functions over theunitary grou
Certification of inequalities involving transcendental functions: combining SDP and max-plus approximation
We consider the problem of certifying an inequality of the form ,
, where is a multivariate transcendental function, and
is a compact semialgebraic set. We introduce a certification method, combining
semialgebraic optimization and max-plus approximation. We assume that is
given by a syntaxic tree, the constituents of which involve semialgebraic
operations as well as some transcendental functions like , ,
, etc. We bound some of these constituents by suprema or infima of
quadratic forms (max-plus approximation method, initially introduced in optimal
control), leading to semialgebraic optimization problems which we solve by
semidefinite relaxations. The max-plus approximation is iteratively refined and
combined with branch and bound techniques to reduce the relaxation gap.
Illustrative examples of application of this algorithm are provided, explaining
how we solved tight inequalities issued from the Flyspeck project (one of the
main purposes of which is to certify numerical inequalities used in the proof
of the Kepler conjecture by Thomas Hales).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, Appears in the Proceedings of the
European Control Conference ECC'13, July 17-19, 2013, Zurich, pp. 2244--2250,
copyright EUCA 201
Convergence rate for a curse-ofdimensionality-free method for a class of HJB PDEs
Abstract. In previous work of the first author and others, max-plus methods have been explored for solution of firstorder, nonlinear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman partial differential equations (HJB PDEs) and corresponding nonlinear control problems. Although max-plus basis expansion and max-plus finite-element methods can provide substantial computationalspeed advantages, they still generally suffer from the curse-of-dimensionality. Here we consider HJB PDEs where the Hamiltonian takes the form of a (pointwise) maximum of linear/quadratic forms. The approach to solution will be rather general, but in order to ground the work, we consider only constituent Hamiltonians corresponding to long-run averagecost-per-unit-time optimal control problems for the development. We consider a previously obtained numerical method not subject to the curse-of-dimensionality. The method is based on construction of the dual-space semigroup corresponding to the HJB PDE. This dual-space semigroup is constructed from the dual-space semigroups corresponding to the constituent linear/quadratic Hamiltonians. The dual-space semigroup is particularly useful due to its form as a max-plus integral operator with kernel obtained from the originating semigroup. One considers repeated application of the dual-space semigroup to obtain the solution. Although previous work indicated that the method was not subject to the curse-of-dimensionality, it did not indicate any error bounds or convergence rate. Here, we obtain specific error bounds. Key words. partial differential equations, curse-of-dimensionality, dynamic programming, max-plus algebra, Legendre transform, Fenchel transform, semiconvexity, Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations, idempotent analysis. AMS subject classifications. 49LXX, 93C10, 35B37, 35F20, 65N99, 47D99 1. Introduction. A robust approach to the solution of nonlinear control problems is through the general method of dynamic programming. For the typical class of problems in continuous time and continuous space, with the dynamics governed by finite-dimensional, ordinary differential equations, this leads to a representation of the problem as a first-order, nonlinear partial differential equation, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation -or the HJB PDE. If one has an infinite time-horizon problem, then the HJB PDE is a steady-state equation, and this PDE is over a space (or some subset thereof) whose dimension is the dimension of the state variable of the control problem. Due to the nonlinearity, the solutions are generally nonsmooth, and one must use the theory of viscosity solution