A Quantitative Framework for Navigating Controller Design Tradeoffs under Computational Constraints

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Verhoek, Chris, Matni, Nikolai
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Verhoek, Chris
Matni, Nikolai
author_facet Verhoek, Chris
Matni, Nikolai
contents Computational constraints permeate the controller design process, and yet are rarely treated as explicit design constraints. Towards addressing this gap, we propose a quantitative framework that captures the effects of common design approximations, such as model order reduction, temporal discretization, horizon truncation, and solver accuracy, on both controller performance and computational requirements. Our framework highlights that these approximations are tunable parameters within an overall controller design process. By leveraging incremental input-to-state stability, we show that bounding the aggregate effects of these approximations reduces to verifying a design-dependent sector bound on the difference between the deployed policy and an idealized baseline, with stability enforced via a small-gain condition. We operationalize these insights via a Design Meta-Problem in which the performance gap is minimized subject to stability, real-time compute, and timing constraints. Finally, we instantiate the framework on a receding horizon LQR case study, and demonstrate a principled near-optimal navigation of tradeoffs among sampling rate, model order, horizon length, and solver iterations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24897
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Quantitative Framework for Navigating Controller Design Tradeoffs under Computational Constraints
Verhoek, Chris
Matni, Nikolai
Systems and Control
Computational constraints permeate the controller design process, and yet are rarely treated as explicit design constraints. Towards addressing this gap, we propose a quantitative framework that captures the effects of common design approximations, such as model order reduction, temporal discretization, horizon truncation, and solver accuracy, on both controller performance and computational requirements. Our framework highlights that these approximations are tunable parameters within an overall controller design process. By leveraging incremental input-to-state stability, we show that bounding the aggregate effects of these approximations reduces to verifying a design-dependent sector bound on the difference between the deployed policy and an idealized baseline, with stability enforced via a small-gain condition. We operationalize these insights via a Design Meta-Problem in which the performance gap is minimized subject to stability, real-time compute, and timing constraints. Finally, we instantiate the framework on a receding horizon LQR case study, and demonstrate a principled near-optimal navigation of tradeoffs among sampling rate, model order, horizon length, and solver iterations.
title A Quantitative Framework for Navigating Controller Design Tradeoffs under Computational Constraints
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24897