Toward Online Optimal Control of Dynamic Robots

As robots are dispatched into the real world, they are faced with a need to autonomously generate goal-driven movements tailored to the (often uncertain) environment at hand. Optimal control & estimation methods have gained broad interest to address this challenge as they (1) provide a principled framework supported by well established and proven theory to architect goal-directed behaviors through parsimonious specifications, (2) exhibit strong generalizability in comparison to model-free techniques, and (3) admit transcription into numerically solvable optimization problems. When applied online, the solution of these problems has historically been limited to systems with a modest number of degrees of freedom due to computational demands and sensitivity challenges. However, in recent years, a combination of efficient numerical techniques and carefully-structured formulations have begun to show promise for the viability of online application with more complex systems (e.g., such as humanoids, quadrupedal robots).

This workshop will bring together leaders across theory, algorithms, and applications of optimal control & estimation to review recent advances and chart next steps forward for the community. The workshop has three main aims that motivate this breath of participation:

1. Expose algorithm developers to emerging theoretical foundations in optimal control/estimation so that next generation of numerical tools are resting on a rigorous base. (Theory to Algorithm).
2. Discuss the benefits, drawbacks, and long-term potentials of ongoing algorithmic developments to inform their adoption in robotics applications. (Algorithm to Application).
3. Provide a forum for practitioners of these methods to discuss areas where current tools are sufficient and also where they are in need of fundamental advances (Application to Theory).

Speakers

1. external page Aaron Ames (Caltech)
   
2. external page Ko Ayusawa (National Inst. of AIST)
   
3. external page Luca Carlone (MIT)
   
4. Andrea Carron (ETH Zurich)
   
5. external page Ayonga Hereid (University of Michigan)
6. external page Aaron Johnson (CMU) 
   
7. external page Todd Murphey (Northwestern University)
   
8. external page Marco Pavone (Stanford University)
   
9. external page Ryan Russell (University of Texas at Austin)
   
10. external page Evangelos Theodorou (Georgia Institute of Technology)