Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

2020

ics Beuchert, J., Solowjow, F., Raisch, J., Trimpe, S., Seel, T. Hierarchical Event-triggered Learning for Cyclically Excited Systems with Application to Wireless Sensor Networks IEEE Control Systems Letters, 4(1):103-108, January 2020 (article) To be published

Control-guided Communication: Efficient Resource Arbitration and Allocation in Multi-hop Wireless Control Systems

Baumann, D., Mager, F., Zimmerling, M., Trimpe, S.

IEEE Control Systems Letters, 4(1):127-132, January 2020 (article) To be published

ics

ics Baumann, D., Mager, F., Zimmerling, M., Trimpe, S. Control-guided Communication: Efficient Resource Arbitration and Allocation in Multi-hop Wireless Control Systems IEEE Control Systems Letters, 4(1):127-132, January 2020 (article) To be published

2019

Controlling Heterogeneous Stochastic Growth Processes on Lattices with Limited Resources

Haksar, R., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S., Schwager, M.

In Proceedings of the 58th IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) , 58th IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2019 (proceedings) Accepted

ics

2019

ics Haksar, R., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S., Schwager, M. Controlling Heterogeneous Stochastic Growth Processes on Lattices with Limited Resources In Proceedings of the 58th IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) , 58th IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2019 (proceedings) Accepted

A Learnable Safety Measure

Heim, S., Rohr, A. V., Trimpe, S., Badri-Spröwitz, A.

Conference on Robot Learning, November 2019 (conference) Accepted

dlg ics

Arxiv [BibTex]

dlg ics Heim, S., Rohr, A. V., Trimpe, S., Badri-Spröwitz, A. A Learnable Safety Measure Conference on Robot Learning, November 2019 (conference) Accepted

Arxiv [BibTex]

Fast Feedback Control over Multi-hop Wireless Networks with Mode Changes and Stability Guarantees

Baumann, D., Mager, F., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Zimmerling, M., Trimpe, S.

ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, 4(2):18, November 2019 (article)

ics

ics Baumann, D., Mager, F., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Zimmerling, M., Trimpe, S. Fast Feedback Control over Multi-hop Wireless Networks with Mode Changes and Stability Guarantees ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, 4(2):18, November 2019 (article)

Mastrangelo, J. M., Baumann, D., Trimpe, S.

Predictive Triggering for Distributed Control of Resource Constrained Multi-agent Systems

In Proceedings of the 8th IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems, 8th IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems (NecSys), September 2019 (inproceedings)

ics

ics Mastrangelo, J. M., Baumann, D., Trimpe, S. Predictive Triggering for Distributed Control of Resource Constrained Multi-agent Systems In Proceedings of the 8th IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems, 8th IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems (NecSys), September 2019 (inproceedings)

Event-triggered Pulse Control with Model Learning (if Necessary)

Baumann, D., Solowjow, F., Johansson, K. H., Trimpe, S.

In Proceedings of the American Control Conference, pages: 792-797, American Control Conference (ACC), July 2019 (inproceedings)

ics

ics Baumann, D., Solowjow, F., Johansson, K. H., Trimpe, S. Event-triggered Pulse Control with Model Learning (if Necessary) In Proceedings of the American Control Conference, pages: 792-797, American Control Conference (ACC), July 2019 (inproceedings)

Data-driven inference of passivity properties via Gaussian process optimization

Romer, A., Trimpe, S., Allgöwer, F.

In Proceedings of the European Control Conference, European Control Conference (ECC), June 2019 (inproceedings)

ics

ics Romer, A., Trimpe, S., Allgöwer, F. Data-driven inference of passivity properties via Gaussian process optimization In Proceedings of the European Control Conference, European Control Conference (ECC), June 2019 (inproceedings)

Buisson-Fenet, M., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S.

Actively Learning Gaussian Process Dynamics

2019 (techreport) Submitted

Abstract

Despite the availability of ever more data enabled through modern sensor and computer technology, it still remains an open problem to learn dynamical systems in a sample-efficient way. We propose active learning strategies that leverage information-theoretical properties arising naturally during Gaussian process regression, while respecting constraints on the sampling process imposed by the system dynamics. Sample points are selected in regions with high uncertainty, leading to exploratory behavior and data-efficient training of the model. All results are verified in an extensive numerical benchmark.

ics

ArXiv [BibTex]

ics Buisson-Fenet, M., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S. Actively Learning Gaussian Process Dynamics 2019 (techreport) Submitted

ArXiv [BibTex]

Trajectory-Based Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning

Doerr, A., Volpp, M., Toussaint, M., Trimpe, S., Daniel, C.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2019 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Policy gradient methods are powerful reinforcement learning algorithms and have been demonstrated to solve many complex tasks. However, these methods are also data-inefficient, afflicted with high variance gradient estimates, and frequently get stuck in local optima. This work addresses these weaknesses by combining recent improvements in the reuse of off-policy data and exploration in parameter space with deterministic behavioral policies. The resulting objective is amenable to standard neural network optimization strategies like stochastic gradient descent or stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. Incorporation of previous rollouts via importance sampling greatly improves data-efficiency, whilst stochastic optimization schemes facilitate the escape from local optima. We evaluate the proposed approach on a series of continuous control benchmark tasks. The results show that the proposed algorithm is able to successfully and reliably learn solutions using fewer system interactions than standard policy gradient methods.

ics

ics Doerr, A., Volpp, M., Toussaint, M., Trimpe, S., Daniel, C. Trajectory-Based Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning In Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2019 (inproceedings)

Resource-aware IoT Control: Saving Communication through Predictive Triggering

Trimpe, S., Baumann, D.

IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(3):5013-5028, June 2019 (article)

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) interconnects multiple physical devices in large-scale networks. When the 'things' coordinate decisions and act collectively on shared information, feedback is introduced between them. Multiple feedback loops are thus closed over a shared, general-purpose network. Traditional feedback control is unsuitable for design of IoT control because it relies on high-rate periodic communication and is ignorant of the shared network resource. Therefore, recent event-based estimation methods are applied herein for resource-aware IoT control allowing agents to decide online whether communication with other agents is needed, or not. While this can reduce network traffic significantly, a severe limitation of typical event-based approaches is the need for instantaneous triggering decisions that leave no time to reallocate freed resources (e.g., communication slots), which hence remain unused. To address this problem, novel predictive and self triggering protocols are proposed herein. From a unified Bayesian decision framework, two schemes are developed: self triggers that predict, at the current triggering instant, the next one; and predictive triggers that check at every time step, whether communication will be needed at a given prediction horizon. The suitability of these triggers for feedback control is demonstrated in hardware experiments on a cart-pole, and scalability is discussed with a multi-vehicle simulation.

ics

PDF arXiv DOI [BibTex]

ics Trimpe, S., Baumann, D. Resource-aware IoT Control: Saving Communication through Predictive Triggering IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(3):5013-5028, June 2019 (article)

PDF arXiv DOI [BibTex]

Feedback Control Goes Wireless: Guaranteed Stability over Low-power Multi-hop Networks

(Best Paper Award)

Mager, F., Baumann, D., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Trimpe, S., Zimmerling, M.

In Proceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, pages: 97-108, 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, April 2019 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Closing feedback loops fast and over long distances is key to emerging applications; for example, robot motion control and swarm coordination require update intervals below 100 ms. Low-power wireless is preferred for its flexibility, low cost, and small form factor, especially if the devices support multi-hop communication. Thus far, however, closed-loop control over multi-hop low-power wireless has only been demonstrated for update intervals on the order of multiple seconds. This paper presents a wireless embedded system that tames imperfections impairing control performance such as jitter or packet loss, and a control design that exploits the essential properties of this system to provably guarantee closed-loop stability for linear dynamic systems. Using experiments on a testbed with multiple cart-pole systems, we are the first to demonstrate the feasibility and to assess the performance of closed-loop control and coordination over multi-hop low-power wireless for update intervals from 20 ms to 50 ms.

ics

arXiv PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

ics Mager, F., Baumann, D., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Trimpe, S., Zimmerling, M. Feedback Control Goes Wireless: Guaranteed Stability over Low-power Multi-hop Networks In Proceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, pages: 97-108, 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, April 2019 (inproceedings)

arXiv PDF DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Demo Abstract: Fast Feedback Control and Coordination with Mode Changes for Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems

(Best Demo Award)

Mager, F., Baumann, D., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Trimpe, S., Zimmerling, M.

Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), pages: 340-341, 18th ACM/IEEE Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), April 2019 (poster)

ics

ics Mager, F., Baumann, D., Jacob, R., Thiele, L., Trimpe, S., Zimmerling, M. Demo Abstract: Fast Feedback Control and Coordination with Mode Changes for Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), pages: 340-341, 18th ACM/IEEE Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), April 2019 (poster)

Fast and Resource-Efficient Control of Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems

Baumann, D.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Febuary 2019 (phdthesis)

ics

ics Baumann, D. Fast and Resource-Efficient Control of Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Febuary 2019 (phdthesis)

arXiv (PDF) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Data-efficient Auto-tuning with Bayesian Optimization: An Industrial Control Study

Neumann-Brosig, M., Marco, A., Schwarzmann, D., Trimpe, S.

IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2019 (article) Accepted

Abstract

Bayesian optimization is proposed for automatic learning of optimal controller parameters from experimental data. A probabilistic description (a Gaussian process) is used to model the unknown function from controller parameters to a user-defined cost. The probabilistic model is updated with data, which is obtained by testing a set of parameters on the physical system and evaluating the cost. In order to learn fast, the Bayesian optimization algorithm selects the next parameters to evaluate in a systematic way, for example, by maximizing information gain about the optimum. The algorithm thus iteratively finds the globally optimal parameters with only few experiments. Taking throttle valve control as a representative industrial control example, the proposed auto-tuning method is shown to outperform manual calibration: it consistently achieves better performance with a low number of experiments. The proposed auto-tuning framework is flexible and can handle different control structures and objectives.

ics

ics Neumann-Brosig, M., Marco, A., Schwarzmann, D., Trimpe, S. Data-efficient Auto-tuning with Bayesian Optimization: An Industrial Control Study IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2019 (article) Accepted

arXiv (PDF) DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Learning Environmental Field Exploration with Computationally Constrained Underwater Robots: Gaussian Processes Meet Stochastic Optimal Control

Duecker, D. A., Geist, A. R., Kreuzer, E., Solowjow, E.

Sensors, 19, 2019 (article)

ics

link (url) [BibTex]

ics Duecker, D. A., Geist, A. R., Kreuzer, E., Solowjow, E. Learning Environmental Field Exploration with Computationally Constrained Underwater Robots: Gaussian Processes Meet Stochastic Optimal Control Sensors, 19, 2019 (article)

link (url) [BibTex]

Event-triggered Learning

Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S.

2019 (techreport) Submitted

ics

ics Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S. Event-triggered Learning 2019 (techreport) Submitted

Event-triggered Learning for Linear Quadratic Control

Schlüter, H., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S.

2019 (techreport)

ics

ics Schlüter, H., Solowjow, F., Trimpe, S. Event-triggered Learning for Linear Quadratic Control 2019 (techreport)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Actively Learning Dynamical Systems with Gaussian Processes

Buisson-Fenet, M.

Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, 2019 (mastersthesis)

Abstract

Predicting the behavior of complex systems is of great importance in many fields such as engineering, economics or meteorology. The evolution of such systems often follows a certain structure, which can be induced, for example from the laws of physics or of market forces. Mathematically, this structure is often captured by differential equations. The internal functional dependencies, however, are usually unknown. Hence, using machine learning approaches that recreate this structure directly from data is a promising alternative to designing physics-based models. In particular, for high dimensional systems with nonlinear effects, this can be a challenging task. Learning dynamical systems is different from the classical machine learning tasks, such as image processing, and necessitates different tools. Indeed, dynamical systems can be actuated, often by applying torques or voltages. Hence, the user has a power of decision over the system, and can drive it to certain states by going through the dynamics. Actuating this system generates data, from which a machine learning model of the dynamics can be trained. However, gathering informative data that is representative of the whole state space remains a challenging task. The question of active learning then becomes important: which control inputs should be chosen by the user so that the data generated during an experiment is informative, and enables efficient training of the dynamics model? In this context, Gaussian processes can be a useful framework for approximating system dynamics. Indeed, they perform well on small and medium sized data sets, as opposed to most other machine learning frameworks. This is particularly important considering data is often costly to generate and process, most of all when producing it involves actuating a complex physical system. Gaussian processes also yield a notion of uncertainty, which indicates how sure the model is about its predictions. In this work, we investigate in a principled way how to actively learn dynamical systems, by selecting control inputs that generate informative data. We model the system dynamics by a Gaussian process, and use information-theoretic criteria to identify control trajectories that maximize the information gain. Thus, the input space can be explored efficiently, leading to a data-efficient training of the model. We propose several methods, investigate their theoretical properties and compare them extensively in a numerical benchmark. The final method proves to be efficient at generating informative data. Thus, it yields the lowest prediction error with the same amount of samples on most benchmark systems. We propose several variants of this method, allowing the user to trade off computations with prediction accuracy, and show it is versatile enough to take additional objectives into account.

ics

[BibTex]

ics Buisson-Fenet, M. Actively Learning Dynamical Systems with Gaussian Processes Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, 2019 (mastersthesis)

[BibTex]

2014

Wenn es was zu sagen gibt

(Klaus Tschira Award 2014 in Computer Science)

Trimpe, S.

Bild der Wissenschaft, pages: 20-23, November 2014, (popular science article in German) (article)

am ics

2014

am ics Trimpe, S. Wenn es was zu sagen gibt Bild der Wissenschaft, pages: 20-23, November 2014, (popular science article in German) (article)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

A Self-Tuning LQR Approach Demonstrated on an Inverted Pendulum

Trimpe, S., Millane, A., Doessegger, S., D’Andrea, R.

In Proceedings of the 19th IFAC World Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, 2014 (inproceedings)

am ics

PDF Supplementary material DOI [BibTex]

am ics Trimpe, S., Millane, A., Doessegger, S., D’Andrea, R. A Self-Tuning LQR Approach Demonstrated on an Inverted Pendulum In Proceedings of the 19th IFAC World Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Supplementary material DOI [BibTex]

A Limiting Property of the Matrix Exponential

Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R.

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 59(4):1105-1110, 2014 (article)

am ics

am ics Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R. A Limiting Property of the Matrix Exponential IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 59(4):1105-1110, 2014 (article)

PDF Supplementary material DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Event-Based State Estimation With Variance-Based Triggering

Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R.

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 59(12):3266-3281, 2014 (article)

am ics

am ics Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R. Event-Based State Estimation With Variance-Based Triggering IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 59(12):3266-3281, 2014 (article)

PDF Supplementary material DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Stability Analysis of Distributed Event-Based State Estimation

Trimpe, S.

In Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, CA, 2014 (inproceedings)

Abstract

An approach for distributed and event-based state estimation that was proposed in previous work [1] is analyzed and extended to practical networked systems in this paper. Multiple sensor-actuator-agents observe a dynamic process, sporadically exchange their measurements over a broadcast network according to an event-based protocol, and estimate the process state from the received data. The event-based approach was shown in [1] to mimic a centralized Luenberger observer up to guaranteed bounds, under the assumption of identical estimates on all agents. This assumption, however, is unrealistic (it is violated by a single packet drop or slight numerical inaccuracy) and removed herein. By means of a simulation example, it is shown that non-identical estimates can actually destabilize the overall system. To achieve stability, the event-based communication scheme is supplemented by periodic (but infrequent) exchange of the agentsâ?? estimates and reset to their joint average. When the local estimates are used for feedback control, the stability guarantee for the estimation problem extends to the event-based control system.

am ics

PDF Supplementary material DOI Project Page [BibTex]

am ics Trimpe, S. Stability Analysis of Distributed Event-Based State Estimation In Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, CA, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Supplementary material DOI Project Page [BibTex]

2009

A Limiting Property of the Matrix Exponential with Application to Multi-loop Control

Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R.

In Proceedings of the Joint 48th IEEE Conference on Decision (CDC) and Control and 28th Chinese Control Conference, 2009 (inproceedings)

am ics

2009

am ics Trimpe, S., D’Andrea, R. A Limiting Property of the Matrix Exponential with Application to Multi-loop Control In Proceedings of the Joint 48th IEEE Conference on Decision (CDC) and Control and 28th Chinese Control Conference, 2009 (inproceedings)