The book gives a novel treatment of recent advances on constrained control problems with emphasis on the controllability, reachability of dynamical discrete-time systems. The new proposed approach provides the right setting for the study of qualitative properties of general types of dynamical systems in both discrete-time and continuous-time systems with possible applications to some control engineering models. Most of the material appears for the first time in a book form. The book is addressed to advanced students, postgraduate students and researchers interested in control system theory and optimal control.

Recent developments in constrained control and estimation have created a need for this comprehensive introduction to the underlying fundamental principles. These advances have significantly broadened the realm of application of constrained control. - Using the principal tools of prediction and optimisation, examples of how to deal with constraints are given, placing emphasis on model predictive control. - New results combine a number of methods in a unique way, enabling you to build on your background in estimation theory, linear control, stability theory and state-space methods. - Companion web site, continually updated by the authors. Easy to read and at the same time containing a high level of technical detail, this self-contained, new approach to methods for constrained control in design will give you a full understanding of the subject.

This book provides a unified approach for the study of constrained Markov decision processes with a finite state space and unbounded costs. Unlike the single controller case considered in many other books, the author considers a single controller with several objectives, such as minimizing delays and loss, probabilities, and maximization of throughputs. It is desirable to design a controller that minimizes one cost objective, subject to inequality constraints on other cost objectives. This framework describes dynamic decision problems arising frequently in many engineering fields. A thorough overview of these applications is presented in the introduction. The book is then divided into three sections that build upon each other.

Many practical control problems are dominated by characteristics such as state, input and operational constraints, alternations between different operating regimes, and the interaction of continuous-time and discrete event systems. At present no methodology is available to design controllers in a systematic manner for such systems. This book introduces a new design theory for controllers for such constrained and switching dynamical systems and leads to algorithms that systematically solve control synthesis problems. The first part is a self-contained introduction to multiparametric programming, which is the main technique used to study and compute state feedback optimal control laws. The book's main objective is to derive properties of the state feedback solution, as well as to obtain algorithms to compute it efficiently. The focus is on constrained linear systems and constrained linear hybrid systems. The applicability of the theory is demonstrated through two experimental case studies: a mechanical laboratory process and a traction control system developed jointly with the Ford Motor Company in Michigan.

While optimality conditions for optimal control problems with state constraints have been extensively investigated in the literature the results pertaining to numerical methods are relatively scarce. This book fills the gap by providing a family of new methods. Among others, a novel convergence analysis of optimal control algorithms is introduced. The analysis refers to the topology of relaxed controls only to a limited degree and makes little use of Lagrange multipliers corresponding to state constraints. This approach enables the author to provide global convergence analysis of first order and superlinearly convergent second order methods. Further, the implementation aspects of the methods developed in the book are presented and discussed. The results concerning ordinary differential equations are then extended to control problems described by differential-algebraic equations in a comprehensive way for the first time in the literature.

How do you fly an airplane from one point to another as fast as possible? What is the best way to administer a vaccine to fight the harmful effects of disease? What is the most efficient way to produce a chemical substance? This book presents practical methods for solving real optimal control problems such as these. Practical Methods for Optimal Control Using Nonlinear Programming, Third Edition focuses on the direct transcription method for optimal control. It features a summary of relevant material in constrained optimization, including nonlinear programming; discretization techniques appropriate for ordinary differential equations and differential-algebraic equations; and several examples and descriptions of computational algorithm formulations that implement this discretize-then-optimize strategy. The third edition has been thoroughly updated and includes new material on implicit Runge–Kutta discretization techniques, new chapters on partial differential equations and delay equations, and more than 70 test problems and open source FORTRAN code for all of the problems. This book will be valuable for academic and industrial research and development in optimal control theory and applications. It is appropriate as a primary or supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

The aim of this volume is to introduce new topics on the areas of difference, differential, integrodifferential and integral equations, evolution equations, control and optimisation theory, dynamic system theory, queuing theory and electromagnetism and their applications.

The book describes how sparse optimization methods can be combined with discretization techniques for differential-algebraic equations and used to solve optimal control and estimation problems. The interaction between optimization and integration is emphasized throughout the book.

This book is the first one devoted to high-dimensional (or large-scale) diffusion stochastic processes (DSPs) with nonlinear coefficients. These processes are closely associated with nonlinear Ito's stochastic ordinary differential equations (ISODEs) and with the space-discretized versions of nonlinear Ito's stochastic partial integro-differential equations. The latter models include Ito's stochastic partial differential equations (ISPDEs).The book presents the new analytical treatment which can serve as the basis of a combined, analytical-numerical approach to greater computational efficiency in engineering problems. A few examples discussed in the book include: the high-dimensional DSPs described with the ISODE systems for semiconductor circuits; the nonrandom model for stochastic resonance (and other noise-induced phenomena) in high-dimensional DSPs; the modification of the well-known stochastic-adaptive-interpolation method by means of bases of function spaces; ISPDEs as the tool to consistently model non-Markov phenomena; the ISPDE system for semiconductor devices; the corresponding classification of charge transport in macroscale, mesoscale and microscale semiconductor regions based on the wave-diffusion equation; the fully time-domain nonlinear-friction aware analytical model for the velocity covariance of particle of uniform fluid, simple or dispersed; the specific time-domain analytics for the long, non-exponential “tails” of the velocity in case of the hard-sphere fluid.These examples demonstrate not only the capabilities of the developed techniques but also emphasize the usefulness of the complex-system-related approaches to solve some problems which have not been solved with the traditional, statistical-physics methods yet. From this veiwpoint, the book can be regarded as a kind of complement to such books as “Introduction to the Physics of Complex Systems. The Mesoscopic Approach to Fluctuations, Nonlinearity and Self-Organization” by Serra, Andretta, Compiani and Zanarini, “Stochastic Dynamical Systems. Concepts, Numerical Methods, Data Analysis” and “Statistical Physics: An Advanced Approach with Applications” by Honerkamp which deal with physics of complex systems, some of the corresponding analysis methods and an innovative, stochastics-based vision of theoretical physics.To facilitate the reading by nonmathematicians, the introductory chapter outlines the basic notions and results of theory of Markov and diffusion stochastic processes without involving the measure-theoretical approach. This presentation is based on probability densities commonly used in engineering and applied sciences.

In the last two decades, the development of specific methodologies for the control of systems described by nonlinear mathematical models has attracted an ever increasing interest. New breakthroughs have occurred which have aided the design of nonlinear control systems. However there are still limitations which must be understood, some of which were addressed at the IFAC Symposium in Capri. The emphasis was on the methodological developments, although a number of the papers were concerned with the presentation of applications of nonlinear design philosophies to actual control problems in chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering.