1. Introduction¶

This is a user manual for FORCES PRO, a commercial tool for generating highly customized optimization solvers that can be deployed on all embedded computers. FORCES PRO is intended to be used in situations were the same optimization problem has to be solved many times, possibly in real-time, with varying data, i.e. there is sufficient time in the design stage for generating a customized solution for the problem you want to solve.

Figure 1.1 Overview of FORCES PRO.¶

The code generation engine in FORCES PRO extracts the structure in your optimization problem and automatically synthesizes a custom optimization solver. The resulting C code can only solve one optimization problem (with certain data changing), hence it is typically many times more efficient and smaller code size than general-purpose optimization solvers. The generated C code is also library-free and uses no dynamic memory allocation making it suitable for safe deployment on real-time autonomous systems.

This document will show you how to input your optimization problem description for code generation in FORCES PRO. It is important to point out that FORCES PRO is not a tool for transforming a problem specification into an optimization problem description. This responsibility lies with the user.

1.1. Troubleshooting and support¶

FORCES PRO typically returns meaningful error messages when code generation errors occur due to invalid user inputs. When encountering other errors please consult our documentation which is included in the FORCES PRO client and is also available on all FORCES PRO servers. In case you cannot find a solution to your problem please submit a bug report to support@embotech.com.

Much effort has gone into making this interface easy to use. We welcome all your suggestions for further improving the usability of the tool. Requests for special functionality for your particular problem will also be considered by our development team. For all requests and feedback please contact support@embotech.com.

1.2. Licensing¶

1.2.1. Industrial licensing¶

FORCES PRO licenses are available through a subscription model. There are four types of licenses, as seen below:

Engineer License: For generating FORCES PRO solvers. Charged per engineer computer.
Software Testing License (Sil/CI): For running FORCES PRO solvers on a desktop PC or a server for simulation and (automated) testing. No physical system is controlled. Charged per platform running the solver.
Floating License: For running FORCES PRO solvers on servers or virtualised environments (such as Docker containers) without permanently mapping the license to a hardware system. Charged per number of platforms able to concurrently run the solver. Currently available only on Linux x86/x86_64.
Hardware Testing License (HiL/Field Testing): For controlling a physical system (i.e. the target platform may also be an ECU or a rapid prototyping platform). Charged per platform running the solver.

For more information regarding licensing please contact sales@embotech.com.

1.2.2. Academic licensing¶

Users at degree granting institutions can have access to the Engineer License version of FORCES PRO free of charge provided they are not doing research for an industrial partner. Software Testing and Hardware Testing licenses are also available at highly reduced rates.

1.3. Citing FORCES PRO¶

If you use FORCES PRO in published scientific work, please cite the following two papers:

@misc{FORCESPro,
      Author       = "Alexander Domahidi and Juan Jerez",
      Howpublished = "Embotech AG, url=https://embotech.com/FORCES-Pro",
      Title        = "FORCES Professional",
      Year         = "2014--2019"
}

@article{FORCESNLP,
  Author       = "A. Zanelli and A. Domahidi and J. Jerez and M. Morari",
  Title        = "FORCES NLP: an efficient implementation of interior-point...
                   methods for multistage nonlinear nonconvex programs",
  Journal      = "International Journal of Control",
  Year         = "2017",
  Pages        = "1-17"
  }

1.4. Release Notes¶

1.4.1. New features in FORCES PRO 2.0.0¶

Introduced support for FORCES PRO QP solvers in the MATLAB MPC Toolbox from MathWorks
Created new examples for the MPC Toolbox plugin

1.4.2. Improvements in FORCES PRO 2.0.0¶

Made tolerances on equalities, inequalities, stationarity and complementarity run-time parameters in NLP solver
Automatic disabling of vectorization when some matrix parameters are sparse

1.4.3. Bug Fixes in FORCES PRO 2.0.0¶

Fixed linking issue with avx on linux host
Fixed mex interface to not copy empty parameters
Fixed bug with MINLP solver exitflag on infeasible problems

1.4.4. New features in FORCES PRO 1.9.1¶

Adapted FORCES PRO license check to portal database
Adapted floating license database checks to portal database
Made linear algebra vectorization stage dependent

1.4.5. Improvements in FORCES PRO 1.9.1¶

Fixed numerical bug in NLP line-search

1.4.6. New features in FORCES PRO 1.9.0¶

New code-generation options for AVX and NEON vectorization
New code generation options and parameters to provide an integer guess to the MINLP solver
New runtime parameter parallelStrategy for MINLP solver
Created dedicated Floating License web Server

1.4.7. Improvements in FORCES PRO 1.9.0¶

Changed floating license communication to http
Enabled user-defined outputs in MINLP solver
Added codeoption c90 to add extra C definitions in casadi model files
Added openmp flag to nvidia webcompiler
Added support for python3.6
Updated usysid files in client

1.4.8. Bug Fixes in FORCES PRO 1.9.0¶

Fixed bug with constraints handling in code-generation
Fixed memory bug in MINLP solver
Fixed bug in parameters indexing in client. Parameters are now indexed with a fixed number of digits depending on the horizon length. 1 digit below 10, 2 digits between 10 and 100 excluded,…
Fixed bug with stacked parameter ineq.p.b

1.4.9. New features in FORCES PRO 1.8.0¶

Mixed-integer nonlinear solver with parallelizable search and other customization features
Support for the Speedgoat platform
Support for the Integrity ARM platform
Support for Docker containers
Updated newParam API to allow for parameters stacked over stages

1.4.10. Improvements in FORCES PRO 1.8.0¶

Improved performance of compactSparse feature
Added custom headers to specify platforms

1.4.11. Bug Fixes in FORCES PRO 1.8.0¶

Fixed numerical bug in v1.7.0

1.4.12. New features in FORCES PRO 1.7.0¶

MISRA 2012 compliance, no mandatory or required violations in generated C code
Added support for dSPACE MicroAutoBox II
Added support for ARM Cortex A72 platforms
Added support for MinGW as a mex compiler
New codeoption compactSparse for smaller code and faster compilation of sparse problems
Adding threadSafeStorage option, enabling creation of thread-safe solvers (requires C11 compilers)

1.4.13. Improvements in FORCES PRO 1.7.0¶

Improved CodeGen speed for sparse problems
Improved web compilation to reduce http timeouts
Secure client-server communication under custom embotech domain
Improved portability of functions used
Added display of license and solver expiration as well as generation id on header files
Updated FORCEScleanup to include all solver related files
Improved messages and warnings returned from FORCES PRO client
Now passing iteration number to function evaluations
Added new error code for invalid parameter initial values

1.4.14. Bug Fixes in FORCES PRO 1.7.0¶

Changed default server when default server file is missing
Always check for default server files when choosing server to use
Corrected the logic for updating the best solution found so far (NLP)
Fixed sparse linear algebra routine names

1.5. Version history of manual¶

The version history of this document is presented in Version history of FORCES PRO manual.

Table 1.1 Version history of FORCES PRO manual¶
Version	Revision	Date	Reason for change
1	0	04/10/2017	Initial version
2	0	09/27/2018	Overhaul of outdated manual
2	1	11/19/2018	Add dSPACE code deployment
3	0	02/20/2019	Updated manual for v1.7.0
4	0	06/04/2019	Updated manual for v1.8.0
4	1	08/29/2019	Updated manual for v1.9.0
5	0	10/10/2019	Updated manual for v1.9.1
6	0	12/09/2019	Updated manual for v2.0.0