MINES ParisTech CAS - Centre automatique et systèmes

On Optimal Control of Complex Dynamical Systems

Thursday 3rd December 2020, 2pm – 3pm.

SPEAKER
Riccardo Bonalli, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, USA

ABSTRACT
Nowadays, achieving efficient computations of optimal trajectories for dynamical systems represents a hard problem. In particular, the presence of nonlinearities and uncertainties affecting the outcome makes this task very challenging. With the objective of introducing optimal control strategies that address those difficulties, in this talk I will discuss two interrelated frameworks: Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) and Pullback Bundle Dynamical Systems (PBDS), from both theoretical and numerical perspectives. Specifically, I will first show how SCP can be leveraged to solve non-linear stochastic optimal control problems. Then, I will explain how efficient real-time initialization strategies can be compute by PBDS for complex dynamical systems.

BIO
Riccardo Bonalli received an M.Sc. degree in mathematical engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2014, and a Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from Sorbonne University in 2018, in collaboration with ONERA–The French Aerospace Lab. He is recipient of the ONERA DTIS Best PhD student award 2018. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. His research interests include theoretical and numerical optimal control with applications in aerospace engineering and robotics.

Slides available