3D scene representation for robot manipulation should capture three key object properties: permanency -- objects that become occluded over time continue to exist; amodal completeness -- objects have 3D occupancy, even if only partial observations are available; spatiotemporal continuity -- the movement of each object is continuous over space and time. In this paper, we introduce 3D Dynamic Scene Representation (DSR), a 3D volumetric scene representation that simultaneously discovers, tracks, reconstructs objects, and predicts their dynamics while capturing all three properties. We further propose DSR-Net, which learns to aggregate visual observations over multiple interactions to gradually build and refine DSR. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance in modeling 3D scene dynamics with DSR on both simulated and real data. Combined with model predictive control, DSR-Net enables accurate planning in downstream robotic manipulation tasks such as planar pushing. Video is available at https://youtu.be/GQjYG3nQJ80.
We propose an approach to online model adaptation and control in the challenging case of hybrid and discontinuous dynamics where actions may lead to difficult-to-escape "trap" states, under a given controller. We first learn dynamics for a system without traps from a randomly collected training set (since we do not know what traps will be encountered online). These "nominal" dynamics allow us to perform tasks in scenarios where the dynamics matches the training data, but when unexpected traps arise in execution, we must find a way to adapt our dynamics and control strategy and continue attempting the task. Our approach, Trap-Aware Model Predictive Control (TAMPC), is a two-level hierarchical control algorithm that reasons about traps and non-nominal dynamics to decide between goal-seeking and recovery policies. An important requirement of our method is the ability to recognize nominal dynamics even when we encounter data that is out-of-distribution w.r.t the training data. We achieve this by learning a representation for dynamics that exploits invariance in the nominal environment, thus allowing better generalization. We evaluate our method on simulated planar pushing and peg-in-hole as well as real robot peg-in-hole problems against adaptive control, reinforcement learning, trap-handling baselines, where traps arise due to unexpected obstacles that we only observe through contact. Our results show that our method outperforms the baselines on difficult tasks, and is comparable to prior trap-handling methods on easier tasks.
In this paper, we will consider the Look-Ahead Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow (LASCOPF) problem looking forward multiple dispatch intervals, in which the load demand varies over dispatch intervals according to some forecast. We will consider the base-case and several contingency scenarios in the upcoming as well as in the subsequent dispatch intervals. We will formulate and solve the problem in a Model Predictive Control (MPC) paradigm. We will present the Auxiliary Proximal Message Passing (APMP) algorithm to solve this problem, which is a bi-layered decomposition-coordination type distributed algorithm, consisting of an outer Auxiliary Problem Principle (APP) layer and an inner Proximal Message Passing (PMP) layer. The APP part of the algorithm distributes the computation across several dispatch intervals and the PMP part performs the distributed computation within each of the dispatch interval across different devices (i.e. generators, transmission lines, loads) and nodes or nets. We will demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with a series of numerical simulations.
This paper studies the constrained/safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem with sparse indicator signals for constraint violations. We propose a model-based approach to enable RL agents to effectively explore the environment with unknown system dynamics and environment constraints given a significantly small number of violation budgets. We employ the neural network ensemble model to estimate the prediction uncertainty and use model predictive control as the basic control framework. We propose the robust cross-entropy method to optimize the control sequence considering the model uncertainty and constraints. We evaluate our methods in the Safety Gym environment. The results show that our approach learns to complete the tasks with a much smaller number of constraint violations than state-of-the-art baselines. Additionally, we are able to achieve several orders of magnitude better sample efficiency when compared with constrained model-free RL approaches. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/liuzuxin/safe-mbrl}.
Differential dynamic programming (DDP) is a direct single shooting method for trajectory optimization. Its efficiency derives from the exploitation of temporal structure (inherent to optimal control problems) and explicit roll-out/integration of the system dynamics. However, it suffers from numerical instability and, when compared to direct multiple shooting methods, it has limited initialization options (allows initialization of controls, but not of states) and lacks proper handling of control constraints. In this work, we tackle these issues with a feasibility-driven approach that regulates the dynamic feasibility during the numerical optimization and ensures control limits. Our feasibility search emulates the numerical resolution of a direct multiple shooting problem with only dynamics constraints. We show that our approach (named BOX-FDDP) has better numerical convergence than BOX-DDP+ (a single shooting method), and that its convergence rate and runtime performance are competitive with state-of-the-art direct transcription formulations solved using the interior point and active set algorithms available in KNITRO. We further show that BOX-FDDP decreases the dynamic feasibility error monotonically--as in state-of-the-art nonlinear programming algorithms. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by generating complex and athletic motions for quadruped and humanoid robots. Finally, we highlight that BOX-FDDP is suitable for model predictive control in legged robots.
The combination of policy search and deep neural networks holds the promise of automating a variety of decision-making tasks. Model Predictive Control (MPC) provides robust solutions to robot control tasks by making use of a dynamical model of the system and solving an optimization problem online over a short planning horizon. In this work, we leverage probabilistic decision-making approaches and the generalization capability of artificial neural networks to the powerful online optimization by learning a deep high-level policy for the MPC (High-MPC). Conditioning on robot's local observations, the trained neural network policy is capable of adaptively selecting high-level decision variables for the low-level MPC controller, which then generates optimal control commands for the robot. First, we formulate the search of high-level decision variables for MPC as a policy search problem, specifically, a probabilistic inference problem. The problem can be solved in a closed-form solution. Second, we propose a self-supervised learning algorithm for learning a neural network high-level policy, which is useful for online hyperparameter adaptations in highly dynamic environments. We demonstrate the importance of incorporating the online adaption into autonomous robots by using the proposed method to solve a challenging control problem, where the task is to control a simulated quadrotor to fly through a swinging gate. We show that our approach can handle situations that are difficult for standard MPC.
We present differentiable predictive control (DPC), a method for learning constrained neural control policies for linear systems with probabilistic performance guarantees. We employ automatic differentiation to obtain direct policy gradients by backpropagating the model predictive control (MPC) loss function and constraints penalties through a differentiable closed-loop system dynamics model. We demonstrate that the proposed method can learn parametric constrained control policies to stabilize systems with unstable dynamics, track time-varying references, and satisfy nonlinear state and input constraints. In contrast with imitation learning-based approaches, our method does not depend on a supervisory controller. Most importantly, we demonstrate that, without losing performance, our method is scalable and computationally more efficient than implicit, explicit, and approximate MPC. Under review at IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
Recent works in high-dimensional model-predictive control and model-based reinforcement learning with learned dynamics and reward models have resorted to population-based optimization methods, such as the Cross-Entropy Method (CEM), for planning a sequence of actions. To decide on an action to take, CEM conducts a search for the action sequence with the highest return according to the dynamics model and reward. Action sequences are typically randomly sampled from an unconditional Gaussian distribution and evaluated on the environment. This distribution is iteratively updated towards action sequences with higher returns. However, this planning method can be very inefficient, especially for high-dimensional action spaces. An alternative line of approaches optimize action sequences directly via gradient descent, but are prone to local optima. We propose a method to solve this planning problem by interleaving CEM and gradient descent steps in optimizing the action sequence. Our experiments show faster convergence of the proposed hybrid approach, even for high-dimensional action spaces, avoidance of local minima, and better or equal performance to CEM. Code accompanying the paper is available here https://github.com/homangab/gradcem.
We present a decentralized minimum-time trajectory optimization scheme based on learning model predictive control for multi-agent systems with nonlinear decoupled dynamics and coupled state constraints. By performing the same task iteratively, data from previous task executions is used to construct and improve local time-varying safe sets and an approximate value function. These are used in a decoupled MPC problem as terminal sets and terminal cost functions. Our framework results in a decentralized controller, which requires no communication between agents over each iteration of task execution, and guarantees persistent feasibility, finite-time closed-loop convergence, and non-decreasing performance of the global system over task iterations. Numerical experiments of a multi-vehicle collision avoidance scenario demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Visuomotor control (VMC) is an effective means of achieving basic manipulation tasks such as pushing or pick-and-place from raw images. Conditioning VMC on desired goal states is a promising way of achieving versatile skill primitives. However, common conditioning schemes either rely on task-specific fine tuning - e.g. using one-shot imitation learning (IL) - or on sampling approaches using a forward model of scene dynamics i.e. model-predictive control (MPC), leaving deployability and planning horizon severely limited. In this paper we propose a conditioning scheme which avoids these pitfalls by learning the controller and its conditioning in an end-to-end manner. Our model predicts complex action sequences based directly on a dynamic image representation of the robot motion and the distance to a given target observation. In contrast to related works, this enables our approach to efficiently perform complex manipulation tasks from raw image observations without predefined control primitives or test time demonstrations. We report significant improvements in task success over representative MPC and IL baselines. We also demonstrate our model's generalisation capabilities in challenging, unseen tasks featuring visual noise, cluttered scenes and unseen object geometries.
Accurate simulation of complex physical systems enables the development, testing, and certification of control strategies before they are deployed into the real systems. As simulators become more advanced, the analytical tractability of the differential equations and associated numerical solvers incorporated in the simulations diminishes, making them difficult to analyse. A potential solution is the use of probabilistic inference to assess the uncertainty of the simulation parameters given real observations of the system. Unfortunately the likelihood function required for inference is generally expensive to compute or totally intractable. In this paper we propose to leverage the power of modern simulators and recent techniques in Bayesian statistics for likelihood-free inference to design a control framework that is efficient and robust with respect to the uncertainty over simulation parameters. The posterior distribution over simulation parameters is propagated through a potentially non-analytical model of the system with the unscented transform, and a variant of the information theoretical model predictive control. This approach provides a more efficient way to evaluate trajectory roll outs than Monte Carlo sampling, reducing the online computation burden. Experiments show that the controller proposed attained superior performance and robustness on classical control and robotics tasks when compared to models not accounting for the uncertainty over model parameters.
In this paper we propose a new approach to complement reinforcement learning (RL) with model-based control (in particular, Model Predictive Control - MPC). We introduce an algorithm, the MPC augmented RL (MPRL) that combines RL and MPC in a novel way so that they can augment each other's strengths. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the MPRL by letting it play against the Atari game Pong. For this task, the results highlight how MPRL is able to outperform both RL and MPC when these are used individually.
Dynamic games are an effective paradigm for dealing with the control of multiple interacting actors. This paper introduces ALGAMES (Augmented Lagrangian GAME-theoretic Solver), a solver that handles trajectory optimization problems with multiple actors and general nonlinear state and input constraints. Its novelty resides in satisfying the first order optimality conditions with a quasi-Newton root-finding algorithm and rigorously enforcing constraints using an augmented Lagrangian formulation. We evaluate our solver in the context of autonomous driving on scenarios with a strong level of interactions between the vehicles. We assess the robustness of the solver using Monte Carlo simulations. It is able to reliably solve complex problems like ramp merging with three vehicles three times faster than a state-of-the-art DDP-based approach. A model predictive control (MPC) implementation of the algorithm demonstrates real-time performance on complex autonomous driving scenarios with an update frequency higher than 60 Hz.
Electric motors are used in many applications and their efficiency is strongly dependent on their control. Among others, PI approaches or model predictive control methods are well-known in the scientific literature and industrial practice. A novel approach is to use reinforcement learning (RL) to have an agent learn electric drive control from scratch merely by interacting with a suitable control environment. RL achieved remarkable results with super-human performance in many games (e.g. Atari classics or Go) and also becomes more popular in control tasks like cartpole or swinging pendulum benchmarks. In this work, the open-source Python package gym-electric-motor (GEM) is developed for ease of training of RL-agents for electric motor control. Furthermore, this package can be used to compare the trained agents with other state-of-the-art control approaches. It is based on the OpenAI Gym framework that provides a widely used interface for the evaluation of RL-agents. The initial package version covers different DC motor variants and the prevalent permanent magnet synchronous motor as well as different power electronic converters and a mechanical load model. Due to the modular setup of the proposed toolbox, additional motor, load, and power electronic devices can be easily extended in the future. Furthermore, different secondary effects like controller interlocking time or noise are considered. An intelligent controller example based on the deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm which controls a series DC motor is presented and compared to a cascaded PI-controller as a baseline for future research. Fellow researchers are encouraged to use the framework in their RL investigations or to contribute to the functional scope (e.g. further motor types) of the package.
We present an approach to learn an object-centric forward model, and show that this allows us to plan for sequences of actions to achieve distant desired goals. We propose to model a scene as a collection of objects, each with an explicit spatial location and implicit visual feature, and learn to model the effects of actions using random interaction data. Our model allows capturing the robot-object and object-object interactions, and leads to more sample-efficient and accurate predictions. We show that this learned model can be leveraged to search for action sequences that lead to desired goal configurations, and that in conjunction with a learned correction module, this allows for robust closed loop execution. We present experiments both in simulation and the real world, and show that our approach improves over alternate implicit or pixel-space forward models. Please see our project page (https://judyye.github.io/ocmpc/) for result videos.
Traditional planning and control methods could fail to find a feasible trajectory for an autonomous vehicle to execute amongst dense traffic on roads. This is because the obstacle-free volume in spacetime is very small in these scenarios for the vehicle to drive through. However, that does not mean the task is infeasible since human drivers are known to be able to drive amongst dense traffic by leveraging the cooperativeness of other drivers to open a gap. The traditional methods fail to take into account the fact that the actions taken by an agent affect the behaviour of other vehicles on the road. In this work, we rely on the ability of deep reinforcement learning to implicitly model such interactions and learn a continuous control policy over the action space of an autonomous vehicle. The application we consider requires our agent to negotiate and open a gap in the road in order to successfully merge or change lanes. Our policy learns to repeatedly probe into the target road lane while trying to find a safe spot to move in to. We compare against two model-predictive control-based algorithms and show that our policy outperforms them in simulation.
This paper introduces the autonomous system of the "Smart Shark II" which won the Formula Student Autonomous China (FSAC) Competition in 2018. In this competition, an autonomous racecar is required to complete autonomously two laps of unknown track. In this paper, the author presents the self-driving software structure of this racecar which ensure high vehicle speed and safety. The key components ensure a stable driving of the racecar, LiDAR-based and Vision-based cone detection provide a redundant perception; the EKF-based localization offers high accuracy and high frequency state estimation; perception results are accumulated in time and space by occupancy grid map. After getting the trajectory, a model predictive control algorithm is used to optimize in both longitudinal and lateral control of the racecar. Finally, the performance of an experiment based on real-world data is shown.
Reinforcement learning has been successfully used to solve difficult tasks in complex unknown environments. However, these methods typically do not provide any safety guarantees during the learning process. This is particularly problematic, since reinforcement learning agent actively explore their environment. This prevents their use in safety-critical, real-world applications. In this paper, we present a learning-based model predictive control scheme that provides high-probability safety guarantees throughout the learning process. Based on a reliable statistical model, we construct provably accurate confidence intervals on predicted trajectories. Unlike previous approaches, we allow for input-dependent uncertainties. Based on these reliable predictions, we guarantee that trajectories satisfy safety constraints. Moreover, we use a terminal set constraint to recursively guarantee the existence of safe control actions at every iteration. We evaluate the resulting algorithm to safely explore the dynamics of an inverted pendulum and to solve a reinforcement learning task on a cart-pole system with safety constraints.
Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) with model-predictive control or online planning has shown great potential for locomotion control tasks in terms of both sample efficiency and asymptotic performance. Despite their initial successes, the existing planning methods search from candidate sequences randomly generated in the action space, which is inefficient in complex high-dimensional environments. In this paper, we propose a novel MBRL algorithm, model-based policy planning (POPLIN), that combines policy networks with online planning. More specifically, we formulate action planning at each time-step as an optimization problem using neural networks. We experiment with both optimization w.r.t. the action sequences initialized from the policy network, and also online optimization directly w.r.t. the parameters of the policy network. We show that POPLIN obtains state-of-the-art performance in the MuJoCo benchmarking environments, being about 3x more sample efficient than the state-of-the-art algorithms, such as PETS, TD3 and SAC. To explain the effectiveness of our algorithm, we show that the optimization surface in parameter space is smoother than in action space. Further more, we found the distilled policy network can be effectively applied without the expansive model predictive control during test time for some environments such as Cheetah. Code is released in https://github.com/WilsonWangTHU/POPLIN.
Model predictive control (MPC) has become one of the well-established modern control methods for three-phase inverters with an output LC filter, where a high-quality voltage with low total harmonic distortion (THD) is needed. Although it is an intuitive controller, easy to understand and implement, it has the significant disadvantage of requiring a large number of online calculations for solving the optimization problem. On the other hand, the application of model-free approaches such as those based on artificial neural networks approaches is currently growing rapidly in the area of power electronics and drives. This paper presents a new control scheme for a two-level converter based on combining MPC and feed-forward ANN, with the aim of getting lower THD and improving the steady and dynamic performance of the system for different types of loads. First, MPC is used, as an expert, in the training phase to generate data required for training the proposed neural network. Then, once the neural network is fine-tuned, it can be successfully used online for voltage tracking purpose, without the need of using MPC. The proposed ANN-based control strategy is validated through simulation, using MATLAB/Simulink tools, taking into account different loads conditions. Moreover, the performance of the ANN-based controller is evaluated, on several samples of linear and non-linear loads under various operating conditions, and compared to that of MPC, demonstrating the excellent steady-state and dynamic performance of the proposed ANN-based control strategy.