Stochastic optimal control of state constrained systems

Abstract

In this article we consider the problem of stochastic optimal control in continuous-time and state-action space of systems with state constraints. These systems typically appear in the area of robotics, where hard obstacles constrain the state space of the robot. A common approach is to solve the problem locally using a linear-quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method. We take a different approach and apply path integral control as introduced by Kappen (Kappen, H.J. (2005a), ‘Path Integrals and Symmetry Breaking for Optimal Control Theory’, Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2005, P11011; Kappen, H.J. (2005b), ‘Linear Theory for Control of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems’, Physical Review Letters, 95, 200201). We use hybrid Monte Carlo sampling to infer the control. We introduce an adaptive time discretisation scheme for the simulation of the controlled dynamics. We demonstrate our approach on two examples, a simple particle in a halfspace and a more complex two-joint manipulator, and we show that in a high noise regime our approach outperforms the iterative LQG method.