Intelligent Control Systems Conference Paper 2021

Probabilistic robust linear quadratic regulators with Gaussian processes

4ba2e2509f3c86cf93f3a891c8de8e96

Probabilistic models such as Gaussian processes (GPs) are powerful tools to learn unknown dynamical systems from data for subsequent use in control design. While learning-based control has the potential to yield superior performance in demanding applications, robustness to uncertainty remains an important challenge. Since Bayesian methods quantify uncertainty of the learning results, it is natural to incorporate these uncertainties in a robust design. In contrast to most state-of-the-art approaches that consider worst-case estimates, we leverage the learning methods’ posterior distribution in the controller synthesis. The result is a more informed and thus efficient trade-off between performance and robustness. We present a novel controller synthesis for linearized GP dynamics that yields robust controllers with respect to a probabilistic stability margin. The formulation is based on a recently proposed algorithm for linear quadratic control synthesis, which we extend by giving probabilistic robustness guarantees in the form of credibility bounds for the system’s stability. Comparisons to existing methods based on worst-case and certainty-equivalence designs reveal superior performance and robustness properties of the proposed method.

Author(s): von Rohr, Alexander and Neumann-Brosig, Matthias and Trimpe, Sebastian
Book Title: Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Learning for Dynamics and Control
Pages: 324--335
Year: 2021
Month: June
Day: 7-8
Series: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR), Vol. 144
Editors: Jadbabaie, Ali and Lygeros, John and Pappas, George J. and Parrilo, Pablo A. and Recht, Benjamin and Tomlin, Claire J. and Zeilinger, Melanie N.
Publisher: PMLR
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (conference)
Address: Brookline, MA 02446
DOI: http://proceedings.mlr.press/v144/
Event Name: 3rd Annual Conference on Learning for Dynamics and Control (L4DC)
Event Place: The Cloud
State: Published
URL: http://proceedings.mlr.press/v144/rohr21a.html
Digital: True
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive

BibTex

@conference{rohr2020probabilistic,
  title = {Probabilistic robust linear quadratic regulators with Gaussian processes},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Learning for Dynamics and Control},
  abstract = {Probabilistic models such as Gaussian processes (GPs) are powerful tools to learn unknown dynamical systems from data for subsequent use in control design. While learning-based control has the potential to yield superior performance in demanding applications, robustness to uncertainty remains an important challenge. Since Bayesian methods quantify uncertainty of the learning results, it is natural to incorporate these uncertainties in a robust design. In contrast to most state-of-the-art approaches that consider worst-case estimates, we leverage the learning methods’ posterior distribution in the controller synthesis. The result is a more informed and thus efficient trade-off between performance and robustness. We present a novel controller synthesis for linearized GP dynamics that yields robust controllers with respect to a probabilistic stability margin. The formulation is based on a recently proposed algorithm for linear quadratic control synthesis, which we extend by giving probabilistic robustness guarantees in the form of credibility bounds for the system’s stability. Comparisons to existing methods based on worst-case and certainty-equivalence designs reveal superior performance and robustness properties of the proposed method. },
  pages = {324--335},
  series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR), Vol. 144},
  editors = {Jadbabaie, Ali and Lygeros, John and Pappas, George J. and Parrilo, Pablo A. and Recht, Benjamin and Tomlin, Claire J. and Zeilinger, Melanie N.},
  publisher = {PMLR},
  address = {Brookline, MA 02446 },
  month = jun,
  year = {2021},
  slug = {rohr2020probabilistic},
  author = {von Rohr, Alexander and Neumann-Brosig, Matthias and Trimpe, Sebastian},
  url = {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v144/rohr21a.html},
  month_numeric = {6}
}