Data-driven Distributionally Robust Optimal Stochastic Control Using the Wasserstein Metric


Abstract in English

Optimal control of a stochastic dynamical system usually requires a good dynamical model with probability distributions, which is difficult to obtain due to limited measurements and/or complicated dynamics. To solve it, this work proposes a data-driven distributionally robust control framework with the Wasserstein metric via a constrained two-player zero-sum Markov game, where the adversarial player selects the probability distribution from a Wasserstein ball centered at an empirical distribution. Then, the game is approached by its penalized version, an optimal stabilizing solution of which is derived explicitly in a linear structure under the Riccati-type iterations. Moreover, we design a model-free Q-learning algorithm with global convergence to learn the optimal controller. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed learning algorithm and demonstrate its robustness to the probability distribution errors via numerical examples.

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