Model-free Adaptive Dynamic Programming for Optimal Control of Discrete-time Affine Nonlinear System

SummaryThis paper considers optimal consensus control problem for unknown nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) subjected to control constraints by utilizing event‐triggered adaptive dynamic programming (ETADP) technique. To deal with the control constraints, we introduce nonquadratic energy consumption functions into performance indices and formulate the Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Bellman (HJB) equations. Then, based on the Bellman's optimality principle, constrained optimal consensus control policies are designed from the HJB equations. In order to implement the ETADP algorithm, the critic networks and action networks are developed to approximate the value functions and consensus control policies respectively based on the measurable system data. Under the event‐triggered control framework, the weights of the critic networks and action networks are only updated at the triggering instants which are decided by the designed adaptive triggered conditions. The Lyapunov method is used to prove that the local neighbor consensus errors and the weight estimation errors of the critic networks and action networks are ultimately bounded. Finally, a numerical example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed ETADP method.

This paper studies the problem of optimal parallel tracking control for continuous-time general nonlinear systems. Unlike existing optimal state feedback control, the control input of the optimal parallel control is introduced into the feedback system. However, due to the introduction of control input into the feedback system, the optimal state feedback control methods can not be applied directly. To address this problem, an augmented system and an augmented performance index function are proposed firstly. Thus, the general nonlinear system is transformed into an affine nonlinear system. The difference between the optimal parallel control and the optimal state feedback control is analyzed theoretically. It is proven that the optimal parallel control with the augmented performance index function can be seen as the suboptimal state feedback control with the traditional performance index function. Moreover, an adaptive dynamic programming ( ADP ) technique is utilized to implement the optimal parallel tracking control using a critic neural network ( NN ) to approximate the value function online. The stability analysis of the closed-loop system is performed using the Lyapunov theory, and the tracking error and NN weights errors are uniformly ultimately bounded ( UUB ) . Also, the optimal parallel controller guarantees the continuity of the control input under the circumstance that there are finite jump discontinuities in the reference signals. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed optimal parallel control method is verified in two cases.

In this paper, a self-learning control scheme is proposed for the infinite horizon optimal control of affine nonlinear systems based on the action dependent heuristic dynamic programming algorithm. The policy iteration technique is introduced to derive the optimal control policy with feasibility and convergence analysis. It shows that the “greedy” control action for each state is uniquely existent, the learned control policy after each policy iteration is admissible, and the optimal control policy is able to be obtained. Two three-layer perceptron neural networks are employed to implement the scheme. The critic network is trained by a novel rule to conform to the Bellman equation, and the action network is trained to yield a better control policy. Both training processes alternate until the optimal control policy is achieved. Two simulation examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the approach.

In this paper, the distributed zero-sum differential game problem for multi-agent nonlinear systems is investigated by using adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) technique, which brings together the distributed control, zero-sum differential graphical game and ADP. To find the cooperative Nash-equilibrium solutions of the associated coupled Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs (HJI) equations, the ADP technique is employed, in which a critic network is constructed to approximate the cooperative cost function online with a novel updating law. By utilizing the Lyapunov direct method, the closed-loop system and weight estimation errors are guaranteed to be uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB). Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Online actor–critic algorithm to solve the continuous-time infinite horizon optimal control problem

In this paper, a novel iterative adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm is developed to solve infinite horizon optimal control problems for discrete-time nonlinear systems. When the iterative control law and iterative performance index function in each iteration cannot be accurately obtained, it is shown that the iterative controls can make the performance index function converge to within a finite error bound of the optimal performance index function. Stability properties are presented to show that the system can be stabilized under the iterative control law which makes the present iterative ADP algorithm feasible for implementation both on-line and off-line. Neural networks are used to approximate the iterative performance index function and compute the iterative control policy, respectively, to implement the iterative ADP algorithm. Finally, two simulation examples are given to illustrate the performance of the present method.

This paper focuses on a class of unknown discrete-time nonlinear systems with dead-zone control constraints based on adaptive dynamic programming (ADP). The discrete-time Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (DTHJB) equation corresponding to the dead-zone control input is formulated. Based on ADP technique, a new cost function is proposed that solves the optimal control with dead zone constraints effectively. It shows that this algorithm allows the implementation of the optimal control without knowing nonlinear affine system model and dead-zone dynamics. Finally, a simulation example is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed iterative algorithm.

The proposed event-triggered control design uses the adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) technique to solve the infinite-horizon optimal control of nonlinear continuous time system in affine form with complete unknown system dynamics in a forward time and online manner. The approximation property of the neural network (NN) is used to estimate the system dynamics and the value function with event-based sampling of state vector. Subsequently the estimated values are used to design the near optimal control policy. In addition, the NN weights are updated as a jump at every trigger instant, hence aperiodic in nature, to save computation when compared to the traditional NN-based approaches. Further, the closed-loop dynamics are formulated as a nonlinear impulsive dynamical system and the extension of the Lyapunov technique is utilized to prove the locally ultimate boundedness of all the closed-loop signals by deriving an adaptive event-trigger condition. Nonetheless, a positive lower bound on the inter-event time is guaranteed to avoid accumulation point. Finally, the analytical design is evaluated by using an example.

For the optimal tracking control problem of affine nonlinear systems, a general value iteration algorithm based on adaptive dynamic programming is proposed in this paper. By system transformation, the optimal tracking problem is converted into the optimal regulating problem for the tracking error dynamics. Then, general value iteration algorithm is developed to obtain the optimal control with convergence analysis. Considering the advantages of echo state network, we use three echo state networks with levenberg-Marquardt (LM) adjusting algorithm to approximate the system, the cost function and the control law. A simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented scheme.

Fuzzy approximation-based optimal consensus control for nonlinear multiagent systems via adaptive dynamic programming

This paper deals with optimal tracking control problems for a class of discrete-time nonlinear systems using a generalized policy iteration adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm. First, by system transformation, the optimal tracking control problem is transformed into an optimal regulation problem. Then the generalized policy iteration ADP algorithm is employed to obtain the optimal tracking controller with convergence and optimality analysis. The developed algorithm uses the idea of two iteration procedures to obtain the iterative tracking control laws and the iterative value functions. Three neural networks, including model network, critic network and action network, are used to implement the developed algorithm. At last, an simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed method.

This paper is concerned with a new data-driven zero-sum neuro-optimal control problem for continuous-time unknown nonlinear systems with disturbance. According to the input-output data of the nonlinear system, an effective recurrent neural network is introduced to reconstruct the dynamics of the nonlinear system. Considering the system disturbance as a control input, a two-player zero-sum optimal control problem is established. Adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) is developed to obtain the optimal control under the worst case of the disturbance. Three single-layer neural networks, including one critic and two action networks, are employed to approximate the performance index function, the optimal control law, and the disturbance, respectively, for facilitating the implementation of the ADP method. Convergence properties of the ADP method are developed to show that the system state will converge to a finite neighborhood of the equilibrium. The weight matrices of the critic and the two action networks are also convergent to finite neighborhoods of their optimal ones. Finally, the simulation results will show the effectiveness of the developed data-driven ADP methods.

For discrete-time nonlinear systems, this research is concerned with optimal control problems (OCPs) with constrained cost, and a novel value iteration with constrained cost (VICC) method is developed to solve the optimal control law with the constrained cost functions. The VICC method is initialized through a value function constructed by a feasible control law. It is proven that the iterative value function is nonincreasing and converges to the solution of the Bellman equation with constrained cost. The feasibility of the iterative control law is proven. The method to find the initial feasible control law is given. Implementation using neural networks (NNs) is introduced, and the convergence is proven by considering the approximation error. Finally, the property of the present VICC method is shown by two simulation examples.

This paper investigates the robust optimal control problem of a class of continuous-time, partially linear, interconnected systems. In addition to the dynamic uncertainties resulted from the interconnected dynamic system, unknown bounded disturbances are taken into account throughout the learning process, wherein the system’s dynamics and the disturbances are assumed unknown. These challenges lead the collected online data to be imperfect. In this scenario, traditional data-driven control techniques, such as adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) and robust ADP, encounter a challenge in approximating the optimal control policy precisely due to imperfect data and computational errors. In this paper, a novel data-driven robust policy iteration method is proposed to simultaneously solve the robust optimal control problems. Without relying on the knowledge of the system’s dynamics, the external disturbances or the complete state, the implementation of the proposed method only needs to access the input and partial state information. Based on the small-gain theorem, the notions of strong unboundedness observability and input-to-output stability, it is guaranteed that the learned robust optimal control gain is stabilizing and that the solution of the closed-loop system is uniformly ultimately bounded despite the existence of dynamic uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. The simulation results reveal the efficiency and practicality of the proposed data-driven control method. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —This work is motivated by the use of reinforcement learning to improve the quality of designing adaptive optimal controllers for engineering applications. Adaptive dynamic programming methods, in particular policy iteration (PI), are widely used in solving optimal control problems. However, due to the iterative nature of PI, the approximated optimal control policy may be inaccurate and imprecise. Especially, when using imperfect system’s measurements instead of the modelling information. This can result in causing the learned control policy to deviate from the actual optimal policy. This becomes more challenging in the existence of dynamic uncertainties and unknown external disturbances which corrupt the measurements and result in imperfect data. This work investigates the conditions on the uncertainties such that the proposed novel data-driven PI algorithm is robust to system’s uncertainties, unknown external disturbances and imperfect measurements. The approximated robust optimal control policy performs robustly in the existences of imperfect data and uncertainties, and at the same time is close enough to the optimal control policy.

In this paper, an on-line adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm is presented to solve the optimal control problem for continuous-time nonlinear systems with control constraints. First, a suitable non-quadratic performance function is introduced to confront control constraints, and then we present an on-line ADP algorithm in which dynamic programming techniques and neural networks are used to solve the optimal control problem for nonlinear systems with control constraints, which is completely different with the traditional ADP algorithm using off-line training, and the corresponding convergence proof is given. Finally, a simulation examples is given to demonstrate the convergence and feasibility of the proposed algorithm.