Reachability-Guided Sequential Quadratic Programming-Guarded Model Predictive Path Integral for Safe Nonlinear Predictive Control

Abstract

Safe robot control often requires combining long-horizon performance optimization with hard state and input constraints, but existing approaches tend to address this tradeoff partially. Sampling-based model predictive control (MPC) methods such as model predictive path integral (MPPI) are effective in handling nonlinear and nonconvex environments, yet their finite-sample rollouts and unconstrained weighted-average update can return an unsafe control. Deterministic nonlinear MPC can explicitly incorporate constraints, but its real-time safety and performance depends strongly on warm starts and local convergence. Hamilton--Jacobi reachability (HJR) provides rigorous safety certificates, but offline value-function computation remains practical only for reduced-order models. We propose ReSQ-MPPI, a reachability-informed generation--refinement architecture that combines these complementary strengths. An HJR value function computed offline for a reduced-order model guides online MPPI sampling toward safe, promising trajectory candidates. The MPPI solution is then refined by a small number of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) iterations in a full-order MPC problem. A key observation is that the standard MPPI inference step is an unconstrained weighted least-squares problem; ReSQ-MPPI replaces it with a constrained MPC refinement that recovers the MPPI update when it is feasible and minimally modifies it otherwise. Simulations in cluttered navigation and autonomous racing environments demonstrate that ReSQ-MPPI improves safety and performance over standalone MPPI, MPC, and reachability-filtered sampling-based control baselines.