Perturbation-based Regret Analysis of Predictive Control in Linear Time Varying Systems

We study predictive control in a setting where the dynamics are time-varying and linear, and the costs are time-varying and well-conditioned. At each time step, the controller receives the exact predictions of costs, dynamics, and disturbances for the future $k$ time steps. We show that when the prediction window $k$ is sufficiently large, predictive control is input-to-state stable and achieves a dynamic regret of $O(\lambda^k T)$, where $\lambda<1$ is a positive constant. This is the first dynamic regret bound on the predictive control of linear time-varying systems. Under more assumptions on the terminal costs, we also show that predictive control obtains the first competitive bound for the control of linear time-varying systems: $1 + O(\lambda^k)$. Our results are derived using a novel proof framework based on a perturbation bound that characterizes how a small change to the system parameters impacts the optimal trajectory.