It is a challenging task to identify the objectives on which a certain decision was based, in particular if several, potentially conflicting criteria are equally important and a continuous set of optimal compromise decisions exists. This task can be understood as the inverse problem of multiobjective optimization, where the goal is to find the objective function vector of a given Pareto set. To this end, we present a method to construct the objective function vector of an unconstrained multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) such that the Pareto critical set contains a given set of data points with prescribed KKT multipliers. If such an MOP can not be found, then the method instead produces an MOP whose Pareto critical set is at least close to the data points. The key idea is to consider the objective function vector in the multiobjective KKT conditions as variable and then search for the objectives that minimize the Euclidean norm of the resulting system of equations. By expressing the objectives in a finite-dimensional basis, we transform this problem into a homogeneous, linear system of equations that can be solved efficiently. Potential applications of this approach include the identification of objectives (both from clean and noisy data) and the construction of surrogate models for expensive MOPs.

In this article, we present an efficient descent method for locally Lipschitz continuous multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs). The method is realized by combining a theoretical result regarding the computation of descent directions for nonsmooth MOPs with a practical method to approximate the subdifferentials of the objective functions. We show convergence to points which satisfy a necessary condition for Pareto optimality. Using a set of test problems, we compare our method to the multiobjective proximal bundle method by M\"akel\"a. The results indicate that our method is competitive while being easier to implement. While the number of objective function evaluations is larger, the overall number of subgradient evaluations is lower. Finally, we show that our method can be combined with a subdivision algorithm to compute entire Pareto sets of nonsmooth MOPs.

We present a novel algorithm that allows us to gain detailed insight into the effects of sparsity in linear and nonlinear optimization, which is of great importance in many scientific areas such as image and signal processing, medical imaging, compressed sensing, and machine learning (e.g., for the training of neural networks). Sparsity is an important feature to ensure robustness against noisy data, but also to find models that are interpretable and easy to analyze due to the small number of relevant terms. It is common practice to enforce sparsity by adding the ℓ1-norm as a weighted penalty term. In order to gain a better understanding and to allow for an informed model selection, we directly solve the corresponding multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) that arises when we minimize the main objective and the ℓ1-norm simultaneously. As this MOP is in general non-convex for nonlinear objectives, the weighting method will fail to provide all optimal compromises. To avoid this issue, we present a continuation method which is specifically tailored to MOPs with two objective functions one of which is the ℓ1-norm. Our method can be seen as a generalization of well-known homotopy methods for linear regression problems to the nonlinear case. Several numerical examples - including neural network training - demonstrate our theoretical findings and the additional insight that can be gained by this multiobjective approach.

Model predictive control is a prominent approach to construct a feedback control loop for dynamical systems. Due to real-time constraints, the major challenge in MPC is to solve model-based optimal control problems in a very short amount of time. For linear-quadratic problems, Bemporad et al. have proposed an explicit formulation where the underlying optimization problems are solved a priori in an offline phase. In this article, we present an extension of this concept in two significant ways. We consider nonlinear problems and - more importantly - problems with multiple conflicting objective functions. In the offline phase, we build a library of Pareto optimal solutions from which we then obtain a valid compromise solution in the online phase according to a decision maker's preference. Since the standard multi-parametric programming approach is no longer valid in this situation, we instead use interpolation between different entries of the library. To reduce the number of problems that have to be solved in the offline phase, we exploit symmetries in the dynamical system and the corresponding multiobjective optimal control problem. The results are verified using two different examples from autonomous driving.

We present a flexible trust region descend algorithm for unconstrained and convexly constrained multiobjective optimization problems. It is targeted at heterogeneous and expensive problems, i.e., problems that have at least one objective function that is computationally expensive. The method is derivative-free in the sense that neither need derivative information be available for the expensive objectives nor are gradients approximated using repeated function evaluations as is the case in finite-difference methods. Instead, a multiobjective trust region approach is used that works similarly to its well-known scalar pendants. Local surrogate models constructed from evaluation data of the true objective functions are employed to compute possible descent directions. In contrast to existing multiobjective trust region algorithms, these surrogates are not polynomial but carefully constructed radial basis function networks. This has the important advantage that the number of data points scales linearly with the parameter space dimension. The local models qualify as fully linear and the corresponding general scalar framework is adapted for problems with multiple objectives. Convergence to Pareto critical points is proven and numerical examples illustrate our findings.

The control of complex systems is of critical importance in many branches of science, engineering, and industry, many of which are governed by nonlinear partial differential equations. Controlling an unsteady fluid flow is particularly important, as flow control is a key enabler for technologies in energy (e.g., wind, tidal, and combustion), transportation (e.g., planes, trains, and automobiles), security (e.g., tracking airborne contamination), and health (e.g., artificial hearts and artificial respiration). However, the high-dimensional, nonlinear, and multi-scale dynamics make real-time feedback control infeasible. Fortunately, these high- dimensional systems exhibit dominant, low-dimensional patterns of activity that can be exploited for effective control in the sense that knowledge of the entire state of a system is not required. Advances in machine learning have the potential to revolutionize flow control given its ability to extract principled, low-rank feature spaces characterizing such complex systems.We present a novel deep learning modelpredictive control framework that exploits low-rank features of the flow in order to achieve considerable improvements to control performance. Instead of predicting the entire fluid state, we use a recurrent neural network (RNN) to accurately predict the control relevant quantities of the system, which are then embedded into an MPC framework to construct a feedback loop. In order to lower the data requirements and to improve the prediction accuracy and thus the control performance, incoming sensor data are used to update the RNN online. The results are validated using varying fluid flow examples of increasing complexity.

We derive a data-driven method for the approximation of the Koopman generator called gEDMD, which can be regarded as a straightforward extension of EDMD (extended dynamic mode decomposition). This approach is applicable to deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems. It can be used for computing eigenvalues, eigenfunctions, and modes of the generator and for system identification. In addition to learning the governing equations of deterministic systems, which then reduces to SINDy (sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics), it is possible to identify the drift and diffusion terms of stochastic differential equations from data. Moreover, we apply gEDMD to derive coarse-grained models of high-dimensional systems, and also to determine efficient model predictive control strategies. We highlight relationships with other methods and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methods using several guiding examples and prototypical molecular dynamics problems.

Multi-objective optimization is an active field of research that has many applications. Owing to its success and because decision-making processes are becoming more and more complex, there is a recent trend for incorporating many objectives into such problems. The challenge with such problems, however, is that the dimensions of the solution sets—the so-called Pareto sets and fronts—grow with the number of objectives. It is thus no longer possible to compute or to approximate the entire solution set of a given problem that contains many (e.g. more than three) objectives. On the other hand, the computation of single solutions (e.g. via scalarization methods) leads to unsatisfying results in many cases, even if user preferences are incorporated. In this article, the Pareto Explorer tool is presented—a global/local exploration tool for the treatment of many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs). In the first step, a solution of the problem is computed via a global search algorithm that ideally already includes user preferences. In the second step, a local search along the Pareto set/front of the given MaOP is performed in user specified directions. For this, several continuation-like procedures are proposed that can incorporate preferences defined in decision, objective, or in weight space. The applicability and usefulness of Pareto Explorer is demonstrated on benchmark problems as well as on an application from industrial laundry design.

In recent years, the success of the Koopman operator in dynamical systems analysis has also fueled the development of Koopman operator-based control frameworks. In order to preserve the relatively low data requirements for an approximation via Dynamic Mode Decomposition, a quantization approach was recently proposed in [Peitz & Klus, Automatica 106, 2019]. This way, control of nonlinear dynamical systems can be realized by means of switched systems techniques, using only a finite set of autonomous Koopman operator-based reduced models. These individual systems can be approximated very efficiently from data. The main idea is to transform a control system into a set of autonomous systems for which the optimal switching sequence has to be computed. In this article, we extend these results to continuous control inputs using relaxation. This way, we combine the advantages of the data efficiency of approximating a finite set of autonomous systems with continuous controls. We show that when using the Koopman generator, this relaxation --- realized by linear interpolation between two operators --- does not introduce any error for control affine systems. This allows us to control high-dimensional nonlinear systems using bilinear, low-dimensional surrogate models. The efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated using several examples with increasing complexity, from the Duffing oscillator to the chaotic fluidic pinball.

In real-world problems, uncertainties (e.g., errors in the measurement, precision errors) often lead to poor performance of numerical algorithms when not explicitly taken into account. This is also the case for control problems, where optimal solutions can degrade in quality or even become infeasible. Thus, there is the need to design methods that can handle uncertainty. In this work, we consider nonlinear multi-objective optimal control problems with uncertainty on the initial conditions, and in particular their incorporation into a feedback loop via model predictive control (MPC). In multi-objective optimal control, an optimal compromise between multiple conflicting criteria has to be found. For such problems, not much has been reported in terms of uncertainties. To address this problem class, we design an offline/online framework to compute an approximation of efficient control strategies. This approach is closely related to explicit MPC for nonlinear systems, where the potentially expensive optimization problem is solved in an offline phase in order to enable fast solutions in the online phase. In order to reduce the numerical cost of the offline phase, we exploit symmetries in the control problems. Furthermore, in order to ensure optimality of the solutions, we include an additional online optimization step, which is considerably cheaper than the original multi-objective optimization problem. We test our framework on a car maneuvering problem where safety and speed are the objectives. The multi-objective framework allows for online adaptations of the desired objective. Alternatively, an automatic scalarizing procedure yields very efficient feedback controls. Our results show that the method is capable of designing driving strategies that deal better with uncertainties in the initial conditions, which translates into potentially safer and faster driving strategies.

In this article we show that the boundary of the Pareto critical set of an unconstrained multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) consists of Pareto critical points of subproblems where only a subset of the set of objective functions is taken into account. If the Pareto critical set is completely described by its boundary (e.g., if we have more objective functions than dimensions in decision space), then this can be used to efficiently solve the MOP by solving a number of MOPs with fewer objective functions. If this is not the case, the results can still give insight into the structure of the Pareto critical set.

In a wide range of applications it is desirable to optimally control a dynamical system with respect to concurrent, potentially competing goals. This gives rise to a multiobjective optimal control problem where, instead of computing a single optimal solution, the set of optimal compromises, the so-called Pareto set, has to be approximated. When the problem under consideration is described by a partial differential equation (PDE), as is the case for fluid flow, the computational cost rapidly increases and makes its direct treatment infeasible. Reduced order modeling is a very popular method to reduce the computational cost, in particular in a multi query context such as uncertainty quantification, parameter estimation or optimization. In this article, we show how to combine reduced order modeling and multiobjective optimal control techniques in order to efficiently solve multiobjective optimal control problems constrained by PDEs. We consider a global, derivative free optimization method as well as a local, gradient-based approach for which the optimality system is derived in two different ways. The methods are compared with regard to the solution quality as well as the computational effort and they are illustrated using the example of the flow around a cylinder and a backward-facing-step channel flow.

We present a new framework for optimal and feedback control of PDEs using Koopman operator-based reduced order models (K-ROMs). The Koopman operator is a linear but infinite-dimensional operator which describes the dynamics of observables. A numerical approximation of the Koopman operator therefore yields a linear system for the observation of an autonomous dynamical system. In our approach, by introducing a finite number of constant controls, the dynamic control system is transformed into a set of autonomous systems and the corresponding optimal control problem into a switching time optimization problem. This allows us to replace each of these systems by a K-ROM which can be solved orders of magnitude faster. By this approach, a nonlinear infinite-dimensional control problem is transformed into a low-dimensional linear problem. Using a recent convergence result for the numerical approximation via Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD), we show that the value of the K-ROM based objective function converges in measure to the value of the full objective function. To illustrate the results, we consider the 1D Burgers equation and the 2D Navier–Stokes equations. The numerical experiments show remarkable performance concerning both solution times and accuracy.

Multiobjective optimization plays an increasingly important role in modern applications, where several criteria are often of equal importance. The task in multiobjective optimization and multiobjective optimal control is therefore to compute the set of optimal compromises (the Pareto set) between the conflicting objectives. The advances in algorithms and the increasing interest in Pareto-optimal solutions have led to a wide range of new applications related to optimal and feedback control, which results in new challenges such as expensive models or real-time applicability. Since the Pareto set generally consists of an infinite number of solutions, the computational effort can quickly become challenging, which is particularly problematic when the objectives are costly to evaluate or when a solution has to be presented very quickly. This article gives an overview of recent developments in accelerating multiobjective optimal control for complex problems where either PDE constraints are present or where a feedback behavior has to be achieved. In the first case, surrogate models yield significant speed-ups. Besides classical meta-modeling techniques for multiobjective optimization, a promising alternative for control problems is to introduce a surrogate model for the system dynamics. In the case of real-time requirements, various promising model predictive control approaches have been proposed, using either fast online solvers or offline-online decomposition. We also briefly comment on dimension reduction in many-objective optimization problems as another technique for reducing the numerical effort.

Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is a recently developed tool for the analysis of the behavior of complex dynamical systems. In this paper, we will propose an extension of DMD that exploits low-rank tensor decompositions of potentially high-dimensional data sets to compute the corresponding DMD modes and eigenvalues. The goal is to reduce the computational complexity and also the amount of memory required to store the data in order to mitigate the curse of dimensionality. The efficiency of these tensor-based methods will be illustrated with the aid of several different fluid dynamics problems such as the von Kármán vortex street and the simulation of two merging vortices.

We present a new algorithm for model predictive control of non-linear systems with respect to multiple, conflicting objectives. The idea is to provide a possibility to change the objective in real-time, e.g. as a reaction to changes in the environment or the system state itself. The algorithm utilises elements from various well-established concepts, namely multiobjective optimal control, economic as well as explicit model predictive control and motion planning with motion primitives. In order to realise real-time applicability, we split the computation into an online and an offline phase and we utilise symmetries in the open-loop optimal control problem to reduce the number of multiobjective optimal control problems that need to be solved in the offline phase. The results are illustrated using the example of an electric vehicle where the longitudinal dynamics are controlled with respect to the concurrent objectives arrival time and energy consumption.