Global Accelerated Nonconvex Geometric Optimization Methods on SO(3)

This paper proposes global accelerated nonconvex geometric (GANG) optimization algorithms for optimizing a class of nonconvex functions on the compact Lie group SO(3). Nonconvex optimization is a challenging problem because the objective function may have multiple critical points, including saddle points. We propose two accelerated geometric algorithms to escape maxima and saddle points using random perturbations. The first algorithm uses the value of the Hessian of the objective function and random perturbations to escape the undesired critical points. In contrast, the second algorithm uses only the gradient information and random perturbations to escape maxima and saddle points. The efficacy of these geometric algorithms is verified in simulations.