Toward Online Optimal Control of Dynamic Robots

Room Number: 524a

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 pageAaron Ames (Caltech)
  2. external pageKo Ayusawa (National Inst. of AIST)
  3. external pageLuca Carlone (MIT)
  4. Andrea Carron (ETH Zurich)
  5. external pageAyonga Hereid (University of Michigan)
  6. external pageAaron Johnson (CMU) 
  7. external pageTodd Murphey (Northwestern University)
  8. external pageMarco Pavone (Stanford University)
  9. external pageRyan Russell (University of Texas at Austin)
  10. external pageEvangelos Theodorou (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Accepted Abstract

A complete list of the submitted papers (extended abstracts) can be found external pagehere.

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