21,557 research outputs found
Chance-Constrained Trajectory Optimization for Safe Exploration and Learning of Nonlinear Systems
Learning-based control algorithms require data collection with abundant
supervision for training. Safe exploration algorithms ensure the safety of this
data collection process even when only partial knowledge is available. We
present a new approach for optimal motion planning with safe exploration that
integrates chance-constrained stochastic optimal control with dynamics learning
and feedback control. We derive an iterative convex optimization algorithm that
solves an \underline{Info}rmation-cost \underline{S}tochastic
\underline{N}onlinear \underline{O}ptimal \underline{C}ontrol problem
(Info-SNOC). The optimization objective encodes both optimal performance and
exploration for learning, and the safety is incorporated as distributionally
robust chance constraints. The dynamics are predicted from a robust regression
model that is learned from data. The Info-SNOC algorithm is used to compute a
sub-optimal pool of safe motion plans that aid in exploration for learning
unknown residual dynamics under safety constraints. A stable feedback
controller is used to execute the motion plan and collect data for model
learning. We prove the safety of rollout from our exploration method and
reduction in uncertainty over epochs, thereby guaranteeing the consistency of
our learning method. We validate the effectiveness of Info-SNOC by designing
and implementing a pool of safe trajectories for a planar robot. We demonstrate
that our approach has higher success rate in ensuring safety when compared to a
deterministic trajectory optimization approach.Comment: Submitted to RA-L 2020, review-
Contracting Nonlinear Observers: Convex Optimization and Learning from Data
A new approach to design of nonlinear observers (state estimators) is
proposed. The main idea is to (i) construct a convex set of dynamical systems
which are contracting observers for a particular system, and (ii) optimize over
this set for one which minimizes a bound on state-estimation error on a
simulated noisy data set. We construct convex sets of continuous-time and
discrete-time observers, as well as contracting sampled-data observers for
continuous-time systems. Convex bounds for learning are constructed using
Lagrangian relaxation. The utility of the proposed methods are verified using
numerical simulation.Comment: conference submissio
Control Regularization for Reduced Variance Reinforcement Learning
Dealing with high variance is a significant challenge in model-free
reinforcement learning (RL). Existing methods are unreliable, exhibiting high
variance in performance from run to run using different initializations/seeds.
Focusing on problems arising in continuous control, we propose a functional
regularization approach to augmenting model-free RL. In particular, we
regularize the behavior of the deep policy to be similar to a policy prior,
i.e., we regularize in function space. We show that functional regularization
yields a bias-variance trade-off, and propose an adaptive tuning strategy to
optimize this trade-off. When the policy prior has control-theoretic stability
guarantees, we further show that this regularization approximately preserves
those stability guarantees throughout learning. We validate our approach
empirically on a range of settings, and demonstrate significantly reduced
variance, guaranteed dynamic stability, and more efficient learning than deep
RL alone.Comment: Appearing in ICML 201
- …