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This paper proposes several novel optimization algorithms for minimizing a nonlinear objective function. The algorithms are enlightened by the optimal state trajectory of an optimal control problem closely related to the minimized objective function. They are superlinear convergent when appropriate parameters are selected as required. Unlike Newton's method, all of them can be also applied in the case of a singular Hessian matrix. More importantly, by reduction, some of them avoid calculating the inverse of the Hessian matrix or an identical dimension matrix and some of them need only the diagonal elements of the Hessian matrix. In these cases, these algorithms still outperform the gradient descent method. The merits of the proposed optimization algorithm are illustrated by numerical experiments.

This paper studies the linear-quadratic (LQ) optimal control problem of a class of systems governed by the first-order hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) with final state constraints. The main contribution is to present the solvability condition and the corresponding explicit optimal controller by using the Lagrange multiplier method and the technique of solving forward and backward partial differential equations (FBPDEs). In particular, the result is reduced to the case with zero-valued final state constraints. Several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the performance of the designed optimal controller.

This paper is concerned with the exact controllability of discrete-time stochastic system which is one of the basic problems of modern control theory. Though the exact controllability of continuous-time system governed by Ito stochastic differential equations has been well studied in S. Peng, Progress in Natural Science, 1994, the counterpart of the discrete-time case is still open due to the adaptiveness constraint of the controllers and the solvability challenging of stochastic difference equation with terminal value. The main contribution in this paper is to present both the Gramian matrix criterion and the Rank criterion for the exact controllability of discrete-time stochastic system. The novelty lies in the transformation of the forward stochastic difference equation into a novel backward one.

In the paper, we propose solving optimization problems (OPs) and understanding the Newton method from the optimal control view. We propose a new optimization algorithm based on the optimal control problem (OCP). The algorithm features converging more rapidly than gradient descent, meanwhile, it is superior to Newton's method because it is not divergent in general and can be applied in the case of a singular Hessian matrix. These merits are supported by the convergence analysis for the algorithm in the paper. We also point out that the convergence rate of the proposed algorithm is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the control weight matrix and proportional to the control terminal time inherited from OCP.

This paper studies the consensus problem of heterogeneous multi-agent systems by the feedforward control and linear quadratic (LQ) optimal control theory. Different from the existing consensus control algorithms, which require to design an additional distributed observer for estimating the leader's information and to solve a set of regulator equations. In this paper, by designing a distributed feedforward controller, a non-standard neighbor error system is transformed into a standard linear system, and then an optimal consensus controller is designed by minimizing a combined state error with neighbour agents. The proposed optimal controller is obtained by solving Riccati equations, and it is shown that the corresponding cost function under the proposed distributed controllers is asymptotically optimal. The proposed consensus algorithm can be directly applicable to solve the consensus problem of homogeneous systems. Simulation example indicates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and a much faster convergence speed than the existing algorithm., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2309.12577

This paper develops a novel approach to the consensus problem of multi-agent systems by minimizing a weighted state error with neighbor agents via linear quadratic (LQ) optimal control theory. Existing consensus control algorithms only utilize the current state of each agent, and the design of distributed controller depends on nonzero eigenvalues of the communication topology. The presented optimal consensus controller is obtained by solving Riccati equations and designing appropriate observers to account for agents' historical state information. It is shown that the corresponding cost function under the proposed controllers is asymptotically optimal. Simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, and a much faster convergence speed than the conventional consensus methods. Moreover, the new method avoids computing nonzero eigenvalues of the communication topology as in the traditional consensus methods.

In this paper, the two-player leader-follower game with private inputs for feedback Stackelberg strategy is considered. In particular, the follower shares its measurement information with the leader except its historical control inputs while the leader shares none of the historical control inputs and the measurement information with the follower. The private inputs of the leader and the follower lead to the main obstacle, which causes the fact that the estimation gain and the control gain are related with each other, resulting that the forward and backward Riccati equations are coupled and making the calculation complicated. By introducing a kind of novel observers through the information structure for the follower and the leader, respectively, a kind of new observer-feedback Stacklberg strategy is designed. Accordingly, the above-mentioned obstacle is also avoided. Moreover, it is found that the cost functions under the presented observer-feedback Stackelberg strategy are asymptotically optimal to the cost functions under the optimal feedback Stackelberg strategy with the feedback form of the state. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the efficiency of this paper.

In this paper, we focus on a method based on optimal control to address the optimization problem. The objective is to find the optimal solution that minimizes the objective function. We transform the optimization problem into optimal control by designing an appropriate cost function. Using Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and the associated forward-backward difference equations (FBDEs), we derive the iterative update gain for the optimization. The steady system state can be considered as the solution to the optimization problem. Finally, we discuss the compelling characteristics of our method and further demonstrate its high precision, low oscillation, and applicability for finding different local minima of non-convex functions through several simulation examples.

This paper focuses on optimal mismatched disturbance rejection control for linear continuoustime uncontrollable systems. Different from previous studies, by introducing a new quadratic performance index to transform the mismatched disturbance rejection control into a linear quadratic tracking problem, the regulated state can track a reference trajectory and minimize the influence of disturbance. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the solvability and the disturbance rejection controller are obtained by solving a forward-backward differential equation over a finite horizon. A sufficient condition for system stability is obtained over an infinite horizon under detectable condition. This paper details our novel approach for transforming disturbance rejection into a linear quadratic tracking problem. The effectiveness of the proposed method is provided with two examples to demonstrate., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.07014

In this paper, we study the linear quadratic (LQ) optimal control problem of linear systems with private input and measurement information. The main challenging lies in the unavailability of other regulators' historical input information. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce a kind of novel observers by using the private input and measurement information and accordingly design a kind of new decentralized controllers. In particular, it is verified that the corresponding cost function under the proposed decentralized controllers are asymptotically optimal as comparison with the optimal cost under optimal state-feedback controller. The presented results in this paper are new to the best of our knowledge, which represent the fundamental contribution to classical decentralized control.

This study focuses on the problem of optimal mismatched disturbance rejection control for uncontrollable linear discrete-time systems. In contrast to previous studies, by introducing a quadratic performance index such that the regulated state can track a reference trajectory and minimize the effects of disturbances, mismatched disturbance rejection control is transformed into a linear quadratic tracking problem. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the solvability of this problem over a finite horizon and a disturbance rejection controller are derived by solving a forward-backward difference equation. In the case of an infinite horizon, a sufficient condition for the stabilization of the system is obtained under the detectable condition. This paper details our novel approach to disturbance rejection. Four examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper, we study the social optimality for mean field linear quadratic control systems following the direct approach, where subsystems are coupled via individual dynamics and costs according to a network topology. A graph is introduced to represent the network topology of the large-population system, where nodes represent subpopulations called clusters and edges represent communication relationship. By the direct approach, we first seek the optimal controller under centralized information structure, which characterized by a set of forward-backward stochastic differential equations. Then the feedback controller is obtained with the help of Riccat equations. Finally, we design the distributed controller with mean field approximations, which has the property of asymptotically social optimality.

This paper is concerned with a new class of mean-field games which involve a finite number of agents. Necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of the decentralized open-loop Nash equilibrium in terms of non-standard forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs). By solving the FBSDEs, we design a set of decentralized strategies by virtue of two differential Riccati equations. Instead of the $\varepsilon$-Nash equilibrium in classical mean-field games, the set of decentralized strategies is shown to be a Nash equilibrium. For the infinite-horizon problem, a simple condition is given for the solvability of the algebraic Riccati equation arising from consensus. Furthermore, the social optimal control problem is studied. Under a mild condition, the decentralized social optimal control and the corresponding social cost are given., Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures

We investigate the linear quadratic Gaussian Stackelberg game under a class of nested observation information pattern. Two decision makers implement control strategies relying on different information sets: The follower uses its observation data to design its strategy, whereas the leader implements its strategy using global observation data. We show that the solution requires solving a new type of forward-backward stochastic differential equations whose drift terms contain two types of conditional expectation terms associated to the adjoint variables. We then propose a method to find the functional relations between each adjoint pair, i.e., each pair formed by an adjoint variable and the conditional expectation of its associated state. The proposed method follows a layered pattern. More precisely, in the inner layer, we seek the functional relation for the adjoint pair under the sigma-sub-algebra generated by follower's observation information; and in the outer layer, we look for the functional relation for the adjoint pair under the sigma-sub-algebra generated by leader's observation information. Our result shows that the optimal open-loop solution admits an explicit feedback type representation. More precisely, the feedback coefficient matrices satisfy tuples of coupled forward-backward differential Riccati equations, and feedback variables are computed by Kalman-Bucy filtering.

This paper is concerned with mismatched disturbance rejection control for the second-order discrete-time systems.Different from previous work, the controllability of the system is applied to design the disturbance compensation gain, which does not require any coordinate transformations. Via this new idea, it is shown that disturbance in the regulated output is immediately and directly compensated in the case that the disturbance is known. When the disturbance is unknown, an extra generalized extended state observer is applied to design the controller. Two examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Numerical simulation shows that the designed controller has excellent disturbance rejection effect when the disturbance is known. The example with respect to the permanent-magnet direct current motor illustrates that the proposed control method for unknown disturbance rejection is effective.