Course Details

Time and Place:

T,R 9:30 AM to 10:50 AM in Baldy 115

Office Hours:

Drop in anytime during my office hours, which are Thursday at 4:00-5:00 pm. Otherwise call to make an appointment, or contact me via e-mail:

Office: 1009 Furnas Hall, Office Tel: 645-2593 x2235.

Description:

The topics covered in this course include: Review of function Optimization, Lagrange multipliers. Calculus of Variations. Derivation of necessary conditions of optimality for problems with free and fixed final-time and states. Pontryagins Maximum Principle. Applications to specific optimal control problems such as LQR, Time-Optimal and Fuel/Time Optimal Control. Computational methods in Optimal Control: Steepest descent philosophy, and Shooting method.

Objectives:

The emphasis in the undergraduate courses on control are primarily on qualitative rather than quantitative measures such as stability. Inclusion of physical constraints such as saturation constraints on actuator inputs, and states into the control design problem are necessary to derive an applicable control. The goal of optimal control is to determine the control signal that will cause a system to satisfy physical constraints and simultaneously minimize (or Maximize) some measure of performance. The objective of this course is to introduce graduate students to the concepts of Calculus of Variations. This course will emphasize the formulation and solution of optimal control problems for problems associated with Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering Applications. Some classic problems such as time-optimal and LQR design for the benchmark floating oscillator problem will be discussed in detail. Undergraduate control and Linear system analysis background or permission of instructor is the prerequisite for this course.

Prerequisites:

MAE 571/Permission of Instructor.

Textbook:

Kirk, D. E., Optimal Control Theory: An Introduction , Dover Publications, 2004. There will be occasional handouts to supplement the textbook.

Homework:

Homeworks will be periodically assigned, which are due one week from the day they are assigned. Late homeworks will not be accepted and solutions to the homeworks will be discussed in class.

Project:

The student selects a project topic by the end of the fourth week in consultation with the instructor. The problem could be related to the student's thesis/dissertation topic. A final project report at the end of the term is also required which will include a detailed literature review of the problem in question.

References:

Naidu, D. S., Optimal Control Systems , CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL 33431, 2003.
Sage A. P. and White C. C., Optimum System Control , Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977.
Bryson A. W. and Ho. Y., Applied Optimal Control: Optimization, Estimation and Control , Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, New York, NJ, 1975.
AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics
ASME Journal for Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control
International Journal of Control

Important Dates