arXiv subjects

Minsen Yuan

Publications and source records attributed to Minsen Yuan.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Nonlinear Trajectory Optimization Models for Energy-Sharing UAV-UGV Systems with Multiple Task Locations

Energy-sharing UAV-UGV systems extend the endurance of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by leveraging Uncrewed Ground Vehicles (UGVs) as mobile charging stations, enabling persistent autonomy in infrastructure-sparse environments. Trajectory optimization for these systems is often challenging due to UGVs' terrain access constraints and the discrete nature of task scheduling. We propose a smooth nonlinear program model for the joint trajectory optimization for these systems. Unlike existing models, the proposed model allows smooth parameterization of UGVs' terrain access constraints and supports partial UAV recharging. Further, it introduces a smooth approximation of disjunctive constraints that eliminates the need for computationally expensive integer programming and enables efficient solutions via nonlinear programming algorithms. We demonstrate the proposed model on a one-UAV-one-UGV system with multiple task locations. Compared with mixed-integer nonlinear programs, this model reduces the computation time by orders of magnitude.

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arXiv2025

Sequential Convex Programming with Filtering-Based Warm-Starting for Continuous-Time Multiagent Quadrotor Trajectory Optimization

Optimizing the trajectories of multiple quadrotors in a shared space is a core challenge in various applications. Many existing trajectory optimization methods enforce constraints only at the discretization points, leading to violations between discretization points. They also often lack warm-starting strategies for iterative solution methods such as sequential convex programming, causing slow convergence or sensitivity to the initial guess. We propose a framework for optimizing multiagent quadrotor trajectories that combines a sequential convex programming approach with filtering-based warm-starting. This framework not only ensures constraint satisfaction along the entire continuous-time trajectory but also provides an online warm-starting strategy that accelerates convergence and improves solution quality in numerical experiments. The key idea is to first transform continuous-time constraints into auxiliary nonlinear dynamics and boundary constraints, both of which are compatible with sequential convex programming. Furthermore, we propose a novel warm-starting strategy by approximating the trajectory optimization problem as a Bayesian state estimation problem. This approximation provides an efficient estimate of the optimal trajectories. We demonstrate the proposed framework on multiagent quadrotor trajectory optimization with collision avoidance constraints. Compared with benchmark methods, the proposed framework achieves not only continuous-time constraint satisfaction, but also reduces computation time by up to two orders of magnitude.

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arXiv2024

Filtering-Linearization: A First-Order Method for Nonconvex Trajectory Optimization with Filter-Based Warm-Starting

Nonconvex trajectory optimization is at the core of designing trajectories for complex autonomous systems. A challenge for nonconvex trajectory optimization methods, such as sequential convex programming, is to find an effective warm-starting point to approximate the nonconvex optimization with a sequence of convex ones. We introduce a first-order method with filter-based warm-starting for nonconvex trajectory optimization. The idea is to first generate sampled trajectories using constraint-aware particle filtering, which solves the problem as an estimation problem. We then identify different locally optimal trajectories through agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Finally, we choose the best locally optimal trajectory to warm-start the prox-linear method, a first-order method with guaranteed convergence. We demonstrate the proposed method on a multi-agent trajectory optimization problem with linear dynamics and nonconvex collision avoidance. Compared with sequential quadratic programming and interior-point method, the proposed method reduces the objective function value by up to approximately 96\% within the same amount of time for a two-agent problem, and 98\% for a six-agent problem.

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