On the Sample Complexity of the Linear Quadratic Regulator

This paper addresses the optimal control problem known as the linear quadratic regulator in the case when the dynamics are unknown. We propose a multistage procedure, called Coarse-ID control, that estimates a model from a few experimental trials, estimates the error in that model with respect to the truth, and then designs a controller using both the model and uncertainty estimate. Our technique uses contemporary tools from random matrix theory to bound the error in the estimation procedure. We also employ a recently developed approach to control synthesis called System Level Synthesis that enables robust control design by solving a quasi-convex optimization problem. We provide end-to-end bounds on the relative error in control cost that are optimal in the number of parameters and that highlight salient properties of the system to be controlled such as closed-loop sensitivity and optimal control magnitude. We show experimentally that the Coarse-ID approach enables efficient computation of a stabilizing controller in regimes where simple control schemes that do not take the model uncertainty into account fail to stabilize the true system

On the Sample Complexity of the Linear Quadratic Gaussian Regulator

In this paper we provide direct data-driven expressions for the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), the Kalman filter, and the Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) controller using a finite dataset of noisy input, state, and output trajectories. We show that our data-driven expressions are consistent, since they converge as the number of experimental trajectories increases, we characterize their convergence rate, and quantify their error as a function of the system and data properties. These results complement the body of literature on data-driven control and finite-sample analysis, and provide new ways to solve canonical control and estimation problems that do not assume, nor require the estimation of, a model of the system and noise and do not rely on solving implicit equations.Comment: Accepted to CDC 202

On the Sample Complexity of the Linear Quadratic Regulator

This paper addresses the optimal control problem known as the linear quadratic regulator in the case when the dynamics are unknown. We propose a multistage procedure, called Coarse-ID control, that estimates a model from a few experimental trials, estimates the error in that model with respect to the truth, and then designs a controller using both the model and uncertainty estimate. Our technique uses contemporary tools from random matrix theory to bound the error in the estimation procedure. We also employ a recently developed approach to control synthesis called System Level Synthesis that enables robust control design by solving a quasi-convex optimization problem. We provide end-to-end bounds on the relative error in control cost that are optimal in the number of parameters and that highlight salient properties of the system to be controlled such as closed-loop sensitivity and optimal control magnitude. We show experimentally that the Coarse-ID approach enables efficient computation of a stabilizing controller in regimes where simple control schemes that do not take the model uncertainty into account fail to stabilize the true system

Learning Zero-Sum Linear Quadratic Games with Improved Sample Complexity

Zero-sum Linear Quadratic (LQ) games are fundamental in optimal control and can be used (i) as a dynamic game formulation for risk-sensitive or robust control, or (ii) as a benchmark setting for multi-agent reinforcement learning with two competing agents in continuous state-control spaces. In contrast to the well-studied single-agent linear quadratic regulator problem, zero-sum LQ games entail solving a challenging nonconvex-nonconcave min-max problem with an objective function that lacks coercivity. Recently, Zhang et al. discovered an implicit regularization property of natural policy gradient methods which is crucial for safety-critical control systems since it preserves the robustness of the controller during learning. Moreover, in the model-free setting where the knowledge of model parameters is not available, Zhang et al. proposed the first polynomial sample complexity algorithm to reach an $\epsilon$-neighborhood of the Nash equilibrium while maintaining the desirable implicit regularization property. In this work, we propose a simpler nested Zeroth-Order (ZO) algorithm improving sample complexity by several orders of magnitude. Our main result guarantees a $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\epsilon^{-3})$ sample complexity under the same assumptions using a single-point ZO estimator. Furthermore, when the estimator is replaced by a two-point estimator, our method enjoys a better $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\epsilon^{-2})$ sample complexity. Our key improvements rely on a more sample-efficient nested algorithm design and finer control of the ZO natural gradient estimation error

Sample Complexity of Data-Driven Stochastic LQR with Multiplicative Uncertainty

This paper studies the sample complexity of the stochastic Linear Quadratic Regulator when applied to systems with multiplicative noise. We assume that the covariance of the noise is unknown and estimate it using the sample covariance, which results in suboptimal behaviour. The main contribution of this paper is then to bound the suboptimality of the methodology and prove that it decreases with 1/N, where N denotes the amount of samples. The methodology easily generalizes to the case where the mean is unknown and to the distributionally robust case studied in a previous work of the authors. The analysis is mostly based on results from matrix function perturbation analysis