Combinatorial and Parametric Gradient-Free Optimization for Cyber-Physical System Design

The design and evaluation of cyber-physical systems are complex as it includes mechanical, electrical, and software components leading to a high dimensional space for architectural search and parametric tuning. For each new design, engineers need to define performance objectives, capture data from previous designs, make a model-based design, and then develop and enhance each system in each iteration. To address this problem, we present a combinatorial and parametric design space exploration and optimization technique for automatic design creation. We leverage gradient-free methods to jointly optimize the multiple domains of the cyber-physical systems. Finally, we apply this method in a DARPA design challenge where the goal is to create new designs for unmanned aerial vehicles. We evaluate the new designs on performance benchmarks and demonstrate the effectiveness of gradient-free optimization techniques in automatic design creation.