933 research outputs found
Rotation Averaging and Strong Duality
In this paper we explore the role of duality principles within the problem of
rotation averaging, a fundamental task in a wide range of computer vision
applications. In its conventional form, rotation averaging is stated as a
minimization over multiple rotation constraints. As these constraints are
non-convex, this problem is generally considered challenging to solve globally.
We show how to circumvent this difficulty through the use of Lagrangian
duality. While such an approach is well-known it is normally not guaranteed to
provide a tight relaxation. Based on spectral graph theory, we analytically
prove that in many cases there is no duality gap unless the noise levels are
severe. This allows us to obtain certifiably global solutions to a class of
important non-convex problems in polynomial time.
We also propose an efficient, scalable algorithm that out-performs general
purpose numerical solvers and is able to handle the large problem instances
commonly occurring in structure from motion settings. The potential of this
proposed method is demonstrated on a number of different problems, consisting
of both synthetic and real-world data
Inexact Convex Relaxations for AC Optimal Power Flow: Towards AC Feasibility
Convex relaxations of AC optimal power flow (AC-OPF) problems have attracted
significant interest as in several instances they provably yield the global
optimum to the original non-convex problem. If, however, the relaxation is
inexact, the obtained solution is not AC-feasible. The quality of the obtained
solution is essential for several practical applications of AC-OPF, but
detailed analyses are lacking in existing literature. This paper aims to cover
this gap. We provide an in-depth investigation of the solution characteristics
when convex relaxations are inexact, we assess the most promising AC
feasibility recovery methods for large-scale systems, and we propose two new
metrics that lead to a better understanding of the quality of the identified
solutions. We perform a comprehensive assessment on 96 different test cases,
ranging from 14 to 3120 buses, and we show the following: (i) Despite an
optimality gap of less than 1%, several test cases still exhibit substantial
distances to both AC feasibility and local optimality and the newly proposed
metrics characterize these deviations. (ii) Penalization methods fail to
recover an AC-feasible solution in 15 out of 45 cases, and using the proposed
metrics, we show that most failed test instances exhibit substantial distances
to both AC-feasibility and local optimality. For failed test instances with
small distances, we show how our proposed metrics inform a fine-tuning of
penalty weights to obtain AC-feasible solutions. (iii) The computational
benefits of warm-starting non-convex solvers have significant variation, but a
computational speedup exists in over 75% of the cases
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