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This paper presents a joint optimisation framework for optimal estimation and stochastic optimal control with imperfect information. It provides a estimation and control scheme that can be decomposed into a classical optimal estimation step and an optimal control step where a new term coming from optimal estimation is added to the cost. It is shown that a specific particle filter algorithm allows one to solve the first step approximately in the case of Mean Square Error minimisation and under suitable assumptions on the model. Then, it is shown that the estimation-based control step can justify formally the use of Explicit dual controllers which are most of the time derived from empirical matters. Finally, a relevant example from Aerospace engineering is presented.

This paper presents state estimation and stochastic optimal control gathered in one global optimization problem generating dual effect i.e. the control can improve the future estimation. As the optimal policy is impossible to compute, a sub-optimal policy that preserves this coupling is constructed thanks to the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) and a Particle Filter. This method has been applied to the localization and guidance of a drone over a known terrain with height measurements only. The results show that the new method improves the estimation accuracy compared to nominal trajectories.

This paper presents a dual receding horizon output feedback controller for a general non linear stochastic system with imperfect information. The novelty of this controller is that stabilization is treated, inside the optimization problem, as a negative drift constraint on the control that is taken from the theory of stability of Markov chains. The dual effect is then created by maximizing information over the stabilizing controls which makes the global algorithm easier to tune than our previous algorithm. We use a particle filter for state estimation to handle nonlinearities and multimodality. The performance of this method is demonstrated on the challenging problem of terrain aided navigation.

The goal of robust motion planning consists of designing open-loop controls which optimally steer a system to a specific target region while mitigating uncertainties and disturbances which affect the dynamics. Recently, stochastic optimal control has enabled particularly accurate formulations of the problem. Nevertheless, despite interesting progresses, these problem formulations still require expensive numerical computations. In this paper, we start bridging this gap by leveraging statistical linearization. Specifically, through statistical linearization we reformulate the robust motion planning problem as a simpler deterministic optimal control problem subject to additional constraints. We rigorously justify our method by providing estimates of the approximation error, as well as some controllability results for the new constrained deterministic formulation. Finally, we apply our method to the powered descent of a space vehicle, showcasing the consistency and efficiency of our approach through numerical experiments.

Statistical linearization has recently seen a particular surge of interest as a numerically cheap method for robust control of stochastic differential equations. Although it has already been successfully applied to control complex stochastic systems, accessibility and controllability properties of statistical linearization, which are key to make the robust control problem well-posed, have not been investigated yet. In this paper, we bridge this gap by providing sufficient conditions for the accessibility and controllability of statistical linearization. Specifically, we establish simple sufficient algebraic conditions for the accessibility and controllability of statistical linearization, which involve the rank of the Lie algebra generated by the drift only. In addition, we show these latter algebraic conditions are essentially sharp, by means of a counterexample, and that they are generic with respect to the drift and the initial condition., Comment: 23 pages

This paper studies a vertical powered descent problem in the context of planetary landing, considering glide-slope and thrust pointing constraints and minimizing any final cost. In a first time, it proves the Max-Min-Max or Max-Singular-Max form of the optimal control using the Pontryagin Maximum Principle, and it extends this result to a problem formulation considering the effect of an atmosphere. It also shows that the singular structure does not appear in generic cases. In a second time, it theoretically analyzes the optimal trajectory for a more specific problem formulation to show that there can be at most one contact or boundary interval with the state constraint on each Max or Min arc.

Consider a general nonlinear optimal control problem in finite dimension, with constant state and/or control delays. By the Pontryagin Maximum Principle, any optimal trajectory is the projection of a Pontryagin extremal. We establish that, under appropriate assumptions, Pontryagin extremals depend continuously on the parameter delays, for adequate topologies. The proof of the continuity of the trajectory and of the control is quite easy, however, for the adjoint vector, the proof requires a much finer analysis. The continuity property of the adjoint with respect to the parameter delay opens a new perspective for the numerical implementation of indirect methods, such as the shooting method. We also discuss the sharpness of our assumptions., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1709.04383

In this paper we develop a geometric analysis and a numerical algorithm, based on indirect methods, to solve optimal guidance of endo-atmospheric launch vehicle systems under mixed control-state constraints. Two main difficulties are addressed. First, we tackle the presence of Euler singularities by introducing a representation of the configuration manifold in appropriate local charts. In these local coordinates, not only the problem is free from Euler singularities but also it can be recast as an optimal control problem with only pure control constraints. The second issue concerns the initialization of the shooting method. We introduce a strategy which combines indirect methods with homotopies, thus providing high accuracy. We illustrate the efficiency of our approach by numerical simulations on missile interception problems under challenging scenarios.

In this paper we introduce a new procedure to solve nonlinear optimal control problems with delays which exploits indirect methods combined with numerical homotopy procedures. It is known that solving this kind of problems via indirect methods (which arise from the Pontrya-gin Maximum Principle) is complex and computationally demanding because their implementation is faced to two main difficulties: the extremal equations involve forward and backward terms, and besides, the related shooting method has to be carefully initialized. Here, starting from the solution of the non-delayed version of the optimal control problem, delays are introduced by a numerical continuation. This creates a sequence of optimal delayed solutions that converges to the desired solution. We establish a convergence theorem ensuring the continuous dependence w.r.t. the delay of the optimal state, of the optimal control (in a weak sense) and of the corresponding adjoint vector. The convergence of the adjoint vector represents the most challenging step to prove and it is crucial for the well-posedness of the proposed homotopy procedure. Two numerical examples are proposed and analyzed to show the efficiency of this approach.

In this paper, we propose a strategy to solve endo-atmospheric launch vehicle optimal control problems using indirect methods. More specifically, we combine shooting methods with an adequate continuation algorithm, taking advantage of the knowledge of an analytical solution of a simpler problem. This procedure is resumed in two main steps. We first simplify the physical dynamics to obtain an analytical guidance law which is used as initial guess for a shooting method. Then, a continuation procedure makes the problem converge to the complete dynamics leading to the optimal solution of the original system. Numerical results are presented.

- In this paper we introduce a new method to solve fixed-delay optimal control problems which exploits numerical homotopy procedures. It is known that solving this kind of problems via indirect methods is complex and computationally demanding because their implementation is faced with two difficulties: the extremal equations are of mixed type, and besides, the shooting method has to be carefully initialized. Here, starting from the solution of the non-delayed version of the optimal control problem, the delay is introduced by numerical homotopy methods. Convergence results, which ensure the effectiveness of the whole procedure, are provided. The numerical efficiency is illustrated on an example.