Low-Rank Modifications of Riccati Factorizations for Model Predictive Control

In Model Predictive Control (MPC) the control input is computed by solving a constrained finite-time optimal control (CFTOC) problem at each sample in the control loop. The main computational effort is often spent on computing the search directions, which in MPC corresponds to solving unconstrained finite-time optimal control (UFTOC) problems. This is commonly performed using Riccati recursions or generic sparsity exploiting algorithms. In this work the focus is efficient search direction computations for active-set (AS) type methods. The system of equations to be solved at each AS iteration is changed only by a low-rank modification of the previous one, and exploiting this structured change is important for the performance of AS type solvers. In this paper, theory for how to exploit these low-rank changes by modifying the Riccati factorization between AS iterations in a structured way is presented. A numerical evaluation of the proposed algorithm shows that the computation time can be significantly reduced by modifying, instead of re-computing, the Riccati factorization. This speed-up can be important for AS type solvers used for linear, nonlinear and hybrid MPC

Controlling the level of sparsity in MPC

In optimization routines used for on-line Model Predictive Control (MPC), linear systems of equations are usually solved in each iteration. This is true both for Active Set (AS) methods as well as for Interior Point (IP) methods, and for linear MPC as well as for nonlinear MPC and hybrid MPC. The main computational effort is spent while solving these linear systems of equations, and hence, it is of greatest interest to solve them efficiently. Classically, the optimization problem has been formulated in either of two different ways. One of them leading to a sparse linear system of equations involving relatively many variables to solve in each iteration and the other one leading to a dense linear system of equations involving relatively few variables. In this work, it is shown that it is possible not only to consider these two distinct choices of formulations. Instead it is shown that it is possible to create an entire family of formulations with different levels of sparsity and number of variables, and that this extra degree of freedom can be exploited to get even better performance with the software and hardware at hand. This result also provides a better answer to an often discussed question in MPC; should the sparse or dense formulation be used. In this work, it is shown that the answer to this question is that often none of these classical choices is the best choice, and that a better choice with a different level of sparsity actually can be found

Reduced Memory Footprint in Multiparametric Quadratic Programming by Exploiting Low Rank Structure

In multiparametric programming an optimization problem which is dependent on a parameter vector is solved parametrically. In control, multiparametric quadratic programming (mp-QP) problems have become increasingly important since the optimization problem arising in Model Predictive Control (MPC) can be cast as an mp-QP problem, which is referred to as explicit MPC. One of the main limitations with mp-QP and explicit MPC is the amount of memory required to store the parametric solution and the critical regions. In this paper, a method for exploiting low rank structure in the parametric solution of an mp-QP problem in order to reduce the required memory is introduced. The method is based on ideas similar to what is done to exploit low rank modifications in generic QP solvers, but is here applied to mp-QP problems to save memory. The proposed method has been evaluated experimentally, and for some examples of relevant problems the relative memory reduction is an order of magnitude compared to storing the full parametric solution and critical regions

Control and Estimation Oriented Model Order Reduction for Linear and Nonlinear Systems

Optimization based controls are advantageous in meeting stringent performance requirements and accommodating constraints. Although computers are becoming more powerful, solving optimization problems in real-time remains an obstacle because of associated computational complexity. Research efforts to address real-time optimization with limited computational power have intensified over the last decade, and one direction that has shown some success is model order reduction. This dissertation contains a collection of results relating to open- and closed-loop reduction techniques for large scale unconstrained linear descriptor systems, constrained linear systems, and nonlinear systems. For unconstrained linear descriptor systems, this dissertation develops novel gramian and Riccati solution approximation techniques. The gramian approximation is used for an open-loop reduction technique following that of balanced truncation proposed by (Moore, 1981) for ordinary linear systems and (Stykel, 2004) for linear descriptor systems. The Riccati solution is used to generalize the Linear Quadratic Gaussian balanced truncation (LQGBT) of (Verriest, 1981) and (Jonckheere and Silverman, 1983). These are applied to an electric machine model to reduce the number of states from $>$100000 to 8 while improving accuracy over the state-of-the-art modal truncation of (Zhou, 2015) for the purpose of condition monitoring. Furthermore, a link between unconstrained model predictive control (MPC) with a terminal penalty and LQG of a linear system is noted, suggesting an LQGBT reduced model as a natural model for reduced MPC design. The efficacy of such a reduced controller is demonstrated by the real-time control of a diesel airpath. Model reduction generally introduces modeling errors, and controlling a constrained plant subject to modeling errors falls squarely into robust control. A standard assumption of robust control is that inputs/states/outputs are constrained by convex sets, and these sets are ``tightened'' for robust constraint satisfaction. However, robust control is often overly conservative, and resulting control strategies cannot take advantage of the true admissible sets. A new reduction problem is proposed that considers the reduced order model accuracy and constraint conservativeness. A constant tube methodology for reduced order constrained MPC is presented, and the proposed reduced order model is found to decrease the constraint conservativeness of the reduced order MPC law compared to reduced order models obtained by gramian and LQG reductions. For nonlinear systems, a reformulation of the empirical gramians of (Lall et al., 1999) and (Hahn et al., 2003) into simpler, yet more general forms is provided. The modified definitions are used in the balanced truncation of a nonlinear diesel airpath model, and the reduced order model is used to design a reduced MPC law for tracking control. Further exploiting the link between the gramian and Riccati solution for linear systems, the new empirical gramian formulation is extended to obtain empirical Riccati covariance matrices used for closed-loop model order reduction of a nonlinear system. Balanced truncation using the empirical Riccati covariance matrices is demonstrated to result in a closer-to-optimal nonlinear compensator than the previous balanced truncation techniques discussed in the dissertation.PHDNaval Architecture & Marine EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140839/1/riboch_1.pd

Efficient Interior Point Methods for Multistage Problems Arising in Receding Horizon Control

Receding horizon control requires the solution of an optimization problem at every sampling instant. We present efficient interior point methods tailored to convex multistage problems, a problem class which most relevant MPC problems with linear dynamics can be cast in, and specify important algorithmic details required for a high speed implementation with superior numerical stability. In particular, the presented approach allows for quadratic constraints, which is not sup- ported by existing fast MPC solvers. A categorization of widely used MPC problem formulations into classes of different complexity is given, and we show how the computational burden of certain quadratic or linear constraints can be decreased by a low rank matrix forward substitution scheme. Implementation details are provided that are crucial to obtain high speed solvers. We present extensive numerical studies for the proposed methods and compare our solver to three well-known solver packages, outperforming the fastest of these by a factor 2-5 in speed and 3-70 in code size. Moreover, our solver is shown to be very efficient for large problem sizes and for quadratically constrained QPs, extending the set of systems amenable to advanced MPC formulations on low-cost embedded hardware

Dominant speed factors of active set methods for fast MPC

The paper presents a review of active set (AS) algorithms that have been deployed for implementation of fast model predictive control (MPC). The main purpose of the survey is to identify the dominant features of the algorithms that contribute to fast execution of online MPC and to study their influence on the speed. The simulation study is conducted on two benchmark examples where the algorithms are analyzed in the number of iterations and in the workload per iteration. The obtained results suggest directions for potential improvement in the speed of existing AS algorithms