We extend the class of SQP methods for equality constrained optimization to the setting of differentiable manifolds. The use of retractions and stratifications allows us to pull back the involved mappings to linear spaces. We study local quadratic convergence to minimizers. In addition we present a composite step method for globalization based on cubic regularization of the objective function and affine covariant damped Newton method for feasibility. We show transition to fast local convergence of this scheme. We test our method on equilibrium problems in finite elasticity where the stable equilibrium position of an inextensible transversely isotropic elastic rod under dead load is sought.
A worst-case complexity bound is proved for a sequential quadratic optimization (commonly known as SQP) algorithm that has been designed for solving optimization problems involving a stochastic objective function and deterministic nonlinear equality constraints. Barring additional terms that arise due to the adaptivity of the monotonically nonincreasing merit parameter sequence, the proved complexity bound is comparable to that known for the stochastic gradient algorithm for unconstrained nonconvex optimization. The overall complexity bound, which accounts for the adaptivity of the merit param…
This paper presents a methodology for using varying sample sizes in sequential quadratic programming (SQP) methods for solving equality constrained stochastic optimization problems. The first part of the paper deals with the delicate issue of dynamic sample selection in the evaluation of the gradient in conjunction with inexact solutions to the SQP subproblems. Under reasonable assumptions on the quality of the employed gradient approximations and the accuracy of the solutions to the SQP subproblems, we establish global convergence results for the proposed method. Motivated by these results, t…
In this work, based on the ideas of alternating direction method with multipliers (ADMM) and sequential quadratic programming (SQP), as well as Armijo line search technology, monotone splitting SQP algorithms for two-block nonconvex optimization problems with linear equality, inequality and box constraints are discussed. Firstly, the discussed problem is transformed into an optimization problem with only linear equality and box constraints by introducing slack variables. Secondly, we use the idea of ADMM to decompose the quadratic programming (QP) subproblem. Especially, the QP subproblem corr…
Small-Signal Stability Constrained Optimal Power Flow (SSSC-OPF) can provide additional stability measures and control strategies to guarantee the system to be small-signal stable. However, due to the nonsmooth property of the spectral abscissa function, existing algorithms solving SSSC-OPF cannot guarantee convergence. To tackle this computational challenge of SSSC-OPF, we propose a Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method combined with Gradient Sampling (GS) for SSSCOPF.At each iteration of the proposed SQP, the gradient of the spectral abscissa unction is randomly sampled at the curren…
We consider a degenerate nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problem for which the standard constraint qualification such as the generalized Mangasarian Fromovitz constraint qualification (GMFCQ) may not hold. We use smoothing functions with the gradient consistency property to approximate the nonsmooth functions and introduce a smoothing sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm under the exact penalty framework. We show that any accumulation point of a selected subsequence of the iteration sequence generated by the smoothing SQP algorithm is a Clarke stationary point, provided that t…
This paper pursues a two-fold goal. Firstly, we aim to derive novel second-order characterizations of important robust stability properties of perturbed Karush-Kuhn-Tucker systems for a broadclass of constrained optimization problems generated by parabolically regular sets. Secondly, the obtained characterizations are applied to establish well-posedness and superlinear convergence of the basic sequential quadratic programming method to solve parabolically regular constrained optimization problems.
The combining of a General-Purpose Particle Swarm Optimizer (GP-PSO) with Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm for constrained optimization problems has been shown to be highly beneficial to the refinement, and in some cases, the success of finding a global optimum solution. It is shown that the likely difference between leading algorithms are in their local search ability. A comparison with other leading optimizers on the tested benchmark suite, indicate the hybrid GP-PSO with implemented local search to compete along side other leading PSO algorithms.
We prove that a "first-order" Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm for equality constrained optimization has local linear convergence with rate $(1-1/κ_R)^k$, where $κ_R$ is the condition number of the Riemannian Hessian, and global convergence with rate $k^{-1/4}$. Our analysis builds on insights from Riemannian optimization -- we show that the SQP and Riemannian gradient methods have nearly identical behavior near the constraint manifold, which could be of broader interest for understanding constrained optimization.
The problem of interest is the minimization of a nonlinear function subject to nonlinear equality constraints using a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method. The minimization must be performed while observing only noisy evaluations of the objective and constraint functions. In order to obtain stability, the classical SQP method is modified by relaxing the standard Armijo line search based on the noise level in the functions, which is assumed to be known. Convergence theory is presented giving conditions under which the iterates converge to a neighborhood of the solution characterized by…
Indirect trajectory optimization methods such as Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) have found considerable success when only planning under dynamic feasibility constraints. Meanwhile, nonlinear programming (NLP) has been the state-of-the-art approach when faced with additional constraints (e.g., control bounds, obstacle avoidance). However, a na$ï$ve implementation of NLP algorithms, e.g., shooting-based sequential quadratic programming (SQP), may suffer from slow convergence -- caused from natural instabilities of the underlying system manifesting as poor numerical stability within the o…
This paper considers an explicit continuation method with the trusty time-stepping scheme and the limited-memory BFGS (L-BFGS) updating formula (Eptctr) for the linearly constrained optimization problem. At every iteration, Eptctr only involves three pairs of the inner product of vector and one matrix-vector product, other than the traditional and representative optimization method such as the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) or the latest continuation method such as Ptctr \cite{LLS2020}, which needs to solve a quadratic programming subproblem (SQP) or a linear system of equations (Ptctr…
This thesis studies derivative-free optimization (DFO), particularly model-based methods and software. These methods are motivated by optimization problems for which it is impossible or prohibitively expensive to access the first-order information of the objective function and possibly the constraint functions. In particular, this thesis presents PDFO, a package we develop to provide both MATLAB and Python interfaces to Powell's model-based DFO solvers, namely COBYLA, UOBYQA, NEWUOA, BOBYQA, and LINCOA. Moreover, a significant part of this thesis is devoted to developing a new DFO method based…
We consider nonconvex constrained optimization problems and propose a new approach to the convergence analysis based on penalty functions. We make use of classical penalty functions in an unconventional way, in that penalty functions only enter in the theoretical analysis of convergence while the algorithm itself is penalty-free. Based on this idea, we are able to establish several new results, including the first general analysis for diminishing stepsize methods in nonconvex, constrained optimization, showing convergence to generalized stationary points, and a complexity study for SQP-type al…
In this article we propose a descent method for equality and inequality constrained multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) which generalizes the steepest descent method for unconstrained MOPs by Fliege and Svaiter to constrained problems by using two active set strategies. Under some regularity assumptions on the problem, we show that accumulation points of our descent method satisfy a necessary condition for local Pareto optimality. Finally, we show the typical behavior of our method in a numerical example.
The nonlinear optimization problem with linear constraints has many applications in engineering fields such as the visual-inertial navigation and localization of an unmanned aerial vehicle maintaining the horizontal flight. In order to solve this practical problem efficiently, this paper constructs a continuation method with the trusty time-stepping scheme for the linearly equality-constrained optimization problem at every sampling time. At every iteration, the new method only solves a system of linear equations other than the traditional optimization method such as the sequential quadratic pr…
In this paper, we propose an inertial accelerated primal-dual method for the linear equality constrained convex optimization problem. When the objective function has a ``nonsmooth + smooth'' composite structure, we further propose an inexact inertial primal-dual method by linearizing the smooth individual function and solving the subproblem inexactly. Assuming merely convexity, we prove that the proposed methods enjoy $\mathcal{O}(1/k^2)$ convergence rate on the objective residual and the feasibility violation in the primal model. Numerical results are reported to demonstrate the validity of t…
In this paper, we propose a stochastic method for solving equality constrained optimization problems that utilizes predictive variance reduction. Specifically, we develop a method based on the sequential quadratic programming paradigm that employs variance reduction in the gradient approximations. Under reasonable assumptions, we prove that a measure of first-order stationarity evaluated at the iterates generated by our proposed algorithm converges to zero in expectation from arbitrary starting points, for both constant and adaptive step size strategies. Finally, we demonstrate the practical p…
In this paper, a proof of asymptotic stability for the combined system-optimizer dynamics associated with a class of real-time methods for equality constrained nonlinear model predictive control is presented. General Q-linearly convergent online optimization methods are considered and asymptotic stability results are derived for the case where a single iteration of the optimizer is carried out per sampling time. In particular, it is shown that, if the underlying sampling time is sufficiently short, asymptotic stability can be guaranteed. The results constitute an extension to existing attracti…
Constrained Optimization From a Control Perspective via Feedback Linearization
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories（三菱电机研究实验室）；University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）
Second-order dynamical systems are important tools for solving optimization problems, and most of existing works in this field have focused on unconstrained optimization problems. In this paper, we propose an inertial primal-dual dynamical system with constant viscous damping and time scaling for the linear equality constrained convex optimization problem, which consists of a second-order ODE for the primal variable and a first-order ODE for the dual variable. When the scaling satisfies certain conditions, we prove its convergence property without assuming strong convexity. Even the convergenc…
In this article, a globally convergent sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method is developed for multi-objective optimization problems with inequality type constraints. A feasible descent direction is obtained using a linear approximation of all objective functions as well as constraint functions. The sub-problem at every iteration of the sequence has feasible solution. A non-differentiable penalty function is used to deal with constraint violations. A descent sequence is generated which converges to a critical point under the Mangasarian-Fromovitz constraint qualification along with some…
Tikhonov regularized second-order plus first-order primal-dual dynamical systems with asymptotically vanishing damping for linear equality constrained convex optimization problems
This paper extends the SQP-approach of the well-known bundle-Newton method for nonsmooth unconstrained minimization to the nonlinearly constrained case. Instead of using a penalty function or a filter or an improvement function to deal with the presence of constraints, the search direction is determined by solving a convex quadratically constrained quadratic program to obtain good iteration points. Issues arising with this procedure concerning the bundling process as well as in the line search are discussed. Furthermore, global convergence of the method is shown under certain mild assumptions.
University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；Lehigh University（里海大学）
Sequential quadratic optimization algorithms are proposed for solving smooth nonlinear optimization problems with equality constraints. The main focus is an algorithm proposed for the case when the constraint functions are deterministic, and constraint function and derivative values can be computed explicitly, but the objective function is stochastic. It is assumed in this setting that it is intractable to compute objective function and derivative values explicitly, although one can compute stochastic function and gradient estimates. As a starting point for this stochastic setting, an algorith…
Verifying the Second-Order Sufficient Condition (SOSC), thus ensuring a stationary point locally minimizes a given objective function (subject to certain constraints), is an essential component of non-convex computational optimization and equilibrium programming. This article proposes three new "Hessian-free" tests of the SOSC that can be implemented efficiently with gradient evaluations alone and reveal feasible directions of negative curvature when the SOSC fails. The Bordered Hessian Test and a Matrix Inertia test, two classical tests of the SOSC, require explicit knowledge of the Hessian o…
Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) often requires real-time solution to optimization problems. However, in cases where the mathematical model is of high dimension in the solution space, e.g. for solution of partial differential equations (PDEs), black-box optimizers are rarely sufficient to get the required online computational speed. In such cases one must resort to customized solvers. This paper present a new solver for nonlinear time-dependent PDE-constrained optimization problems. It is composed of a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) scheme to solve the PDE-constrained problem …
The classic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is a popular framework to solve linear-equality constrained problems. In this paper, we extend the ADMM naturally to nonlinear equality-constrained problems, called neADMM. The difficulty of neADMM is to solve nonconvex subproblems. We provide globally optimal solutions to them in two important applications. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate excellent performance and scalability of our proposed neADMM over existing state-of-the-start methods.
This paper considers the regularization continuation method and the trust-region updating strategy for the optimization problem with linear equality constraints.The proposed method utilizes the linear conservation law of the regularization continuation method such that it does not need to compute the correction step for preserving the feasibility other than the previous continuation methods and the quasi-Newton updating formulas for the linearly constrained optimization problem. Moreover, the new method uses the special limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (L-BFGS) formula as the pr…
