aiqbench analysis
This paper introduces the Central-Path Certifier (CP-Cert), a novel method for certifying global optimality in non-convex robotics problems that suffer from degeneracy. By leveraging the central path and exploiting problem sparsity, CP-Cert achieves runtimes up to three orders of magnitude faster than direct solvers while maintaining outlier robustness in pose registration. The work represents a significant advancement in algorithmic efficiency for certifiable methods within robotic perception pipelines.
Following a Unique Path: A Fast Certifier Applied to Outlier-Robust Pose Registration
arXiv:2609.03222v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Certifiable methods have arisen as a means to guarantee global optimality of solutions to non-convex problems using convex semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. The most performant of these methods use a local solver to obtain the candidate solution, and then certify its optimality using efficient linear algebra techniques. However, for many problems of interest in robotics, this local-solve-then-certify approach is impeded by a form of degeneracy in the relaxation, leaving a costly optimization of the relaxation as the only recourse. In this paper, we introduce our Central-Path Certifier (CP-Cert), a certifiable method explicitly tailored to certify candidate optima to problems that exhibit this form of degeneracy. Using a candidate as a starting point, our approach seeks a nearby region of the feasible space -- known as the central path -- where a valid certificate can be readily obtained. The approach is kept efficient by exploiting indirect linear algebra techniques, problem sparsity, and parallelism. We apply CP-Cert to both matrix-weighted pose registration and pointcloud data association, whose novel SDP relaxation is of independent interest. On simulated examples, we explore the properties of this novel relaxation and show that CP-Cert is fast and scalable, achieving runtimes that are up to three orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art direct solvers. Finally, we combine these contributions into a certifiable, outlier-robust pose-estimation pipeline, which we apply to real-world data.
Abstract:Certifiable methods have arisen as a means to guarantee global optimality of solutions to non-convex problems using convex semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. The most performant of these methods use a local solver to obtain the candidate solution, and then certify its optimality using efficient linear algebra techniques. However, for many problems of interest in robotics, this local-solve-then-certify approach is impeded by a form of degeneracy in the relaxation, leaving a costly optimization of the relaxation as the only recourse. In this paper, we introduce our Central-Path Certifier (CP-Cert), a certifiable method explicitly tailored to certify candidate optima to problems that exhibit this form of degeneracy. Using a candidate as a starting point, our approach seeks a nearby region of the feasible space -- known as the central path -- where a valid certificate can be readily obtained. The approach is kept efficient by exploiting indirect linear algebra techniques, problem sparsity, and parallelism. We apply CP-Cert to both matrix-weighted pose registration and pointcloud data association, whose novel SDP relaxation is of independent interest. On simulated examples, we explore the properties of this novel relaxation and show that CP-Cert is fast and scalable, achieving runtimes that are up to three orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art direct solvers. Finally, we combine these contributions into a certifiable, outlier-robust pose-estimation pipeline, which we apply to real-world data.
Robotics (cs.RO)
arXiv:2609.03222 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2609.03222v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.03222 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 316 words
