Smooth Sampling-Based Model Predictive Control Using Deterministic Samples

Abstract

Sampling-based model predictive control (MPC) is effective for nonlinear systems but often produces non-smooth control inputs due to random sampling. To address this issue, we extend the model predictive path integral (MPPI) framework with deterministic sampling and improvements from cross-entropy method (CEM)--MPC, such as iterative optimization, proposing deterministic sampling MPPI (dsMPPI). This combination leverages the exponential weighting of MPPI alongside the efficiency of deterministic samples. Experiments demonstrate that dsMPPI achieves smoother trajectories compared to state-of-the-art methods.

To be published in the Proceedings of the 23rd IFAC World Congress (IFAC 2026)