Deterministic Optimal Control

About the Book

This textbook is intended for physics students at the senior and graduate level. The first chapter employs Huygens' theory of wavefronts and wavelets to derive Hamilton's equations and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The final section presents a step-by-step precedure for the quanitzation of a Hamiltonian system. The remarkable congruence between particle dynaics and wave packets is shown. The second chapter presents sufficiency conditions for the standard case, broken, and singular extremals. Chapter III presents four schemes that can yield formal integrals of of Hamilton's equations- Killing's, Noether's, Poisson's, and Jacobi's. Chapter IV discusses iterative, numerical algorithms that converge to extremals. Three discontinuous problems are solved in Chapter V - refraction, jump discontinuities specified for state variables, and inequality contrainsts on state variables. The book contains many exercises and examples, in particular the geodesics of a Riemannian manifold.

About the Author

The author learned optimal control while working in the research department of Grumman Aerospace. He wrote computer programs for the flight paths of aircraft and the lunar lander rocket. He has authored numerous publications on the theory and applications of optimal control.