Controller Synthesis for Discrete-Time Polynomial Systems via Occupation Measures

In this paper, we design nonlinear state feedback controllers for discrete-time polynomial dynamical systems via the occupation measure approach. We propose the discrete-time controlled Liouville equation, and use it to formulate the controller synthesis problem as an infinite-dimensional linear programming problem on measures, which is then relaxed as finite-dimensional semidefinite programming problems on moments of measures and their duals on sums-of-squares polynomials. Nonlinear controllers can be extracted from the solutions to the relaxed problems. The advantage of the occupation measure approach is that we solve convex problems instead of generally non-convex problems, and the computational complexity is polynomial in the state and input dimensions, and hence the approach is more scalable. In addition, we show that the approach can be applied to over-approximating the backward reachable set of discrete-time autonomous polynomial systems and the controllable set of discrete-time polynomial systems under known state feedback control laws. We illustrate our approach on several dynamical systems

Complexity of convex optimization using geometry-based measures and a reference point

Abstract in HTML and working paper for download in PDF available via World Wide Web at the Social Science Research Network.Title from cover. "September 2001."Includes bibliographical references (leaf 29).Our concern lies in solving the following convex optimization problem: minimize cx subject to Ax=b, x \in P, where P is a closed convex set. We bound the complexity of computing an almost-optimal solution of this problem in terms of natural geometry-based measures of the feasible region and the level-set of almost-optimal solutions, relative to a given reference point xr that might be close to the feasible region and/or the almost-optimal level set. This contrasts with other complexity bounds for convex optimization that rely on data-based condition numbers or algebraic measures, and that do not take into account any a priori reference point information. Keywords: Convex Optimization, Complexity, Interior-Point Method, Barrier Method.Robert M. Freund

Non-stationary Stochastic Optimization

We consider a non-stationary variant of a sequential stochastic optimization problem, in which the underlying cost functions may change along the horizon. We propose a measure, termed variation budget, that controls the extent of said change, and study how restrictions on this budget impact achievable performance. We identify sharp conditions under which it is possible to achieve long-run-average optimality and more refined performance measures such as rate optimality that fully characterize the complexity of such problems. In doing so, we also establish a strong connection between two rather disparate strands of literature: adversarial online convex optimization; and the more traditional stochastic approximation paradigm (couched in a non-stationary setting). This connection is the key to deriving well performing policies in the latter, by leveraging structure of optimal policies in the former. Finally, tight bounds on the minimax regret allow us to quantify the "price of non-stationarity," which mathematically captures the added complexity embedded in a temporally changing environment versus a stationary one