Online Policy Optimization in Unknown Nonlinear Systems

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Lin, Yiheng, Preiss, James A., Xie, Fengze, Anand, Emile, Chung, Soon-Jo, Yue, Yisong, Wierman, Adam
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866916214368894976
author Lin, Yiheng
Preiss, James A.
Xie, Fengze
Anand, Emile
Chung, Soon-Jo
Yue, Yisong
Wierman, Adam
author_facet Lin, Yiheng
Preiss, James A.
Xie, Fengze
Anand, Emile
Chung, Soon-Jo
Yue, Yisong
Wierman, Adam
contents We study online policy optimization in nonlinear time-varying dynamical systems where the true dynamical models are unknown to the controller. This problem is challenging because, unlike in linear systems, the controller cannot obtain globally accurate estimations of the ground-truth dynamics using local exploration. We propose a meta-framework that combines a general online policy optimization algorithm ($\texttt{ALG}$) with a general online estimator of the dynamical system's model parameters ($\texttt{EST}$). We show that if the hypothetical joint dynamics induced by $\texttt{ALG}$ with known parameters satisfies several desired properties, the joint dynamics under inexact parameters from $\texttt{EST}$ will be robust to errors. Importantly, the final policy regret only depends on $\texttt{EST}$'s predictions on the visited trajectory, which relaxes a bottleneck on identifying the true parameters globally. To demonstrate our framework, we develop a computationally efficient variant of Gradient-based Adaptive Policy Selection, called Memoryless GAPS (M-GAPS), and use it to instantiate $\texttt{ALG}$. Combining M-GAPS with online gradient descent to instantiate $\texttt{EST}$ yields (to our knowledge) the first local regret bound for online policy optimization in nonlinear time-varying systems with unknown dynamics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_13009
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Policy Optimization in Unknown Nonlinear Systems
Lin, Yiheng
Preiss, James A.
Xie, Fengze
Anand, Emile
Chung, Soon-Jo
Yue, Yisong
Wierman, Adam
Optimization and Control
We study online policy optimization in nonlinear time-varying dynamical systems where the true dynamical models are unknown to the controller. This problem is challenging because, unlike in linear systems, the controller cannot obtain globally accurate estimations of the ground-truth dynamics using local exploration. We propose a meta-framework that combines a general online policy optimization algorithm ($\texttt{ALG}$) with a general online estimator of the dynamical system's model parameters ($\texttt{EST}$). We show that if the hypothetical joint dynamics induced by $\texttt{ALG}$ with known parameters satisfies several desired properties, the joint dynamics under inexact parameters from $\texttt{EST}$ will be robust to errors. Importantly, the final policy regret only depends on $\texttt{EST}$'s predictions on the visited trajectory, which relaxes a bottleneck on identifying the true parameters globally. To demonstrate our framework, we develop a computationally efficient variant of Gradient-based Adaptive Policy Selection, called Memoryless GAPS (M-GAPS), and use it to instantiate $\texttt{ALG}$. Combining M-GAPS with online gradient descent to instantiate $\texttt{EST}$ yields (to our knowledge) the first local regret bound for online policy optimization in nonlinear time-varying systems with unknown dynamics.
title Online Policy Optimization in Unknown Nonlinear Systems
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.13009