Optimal Timing Control of a Class of Hybrid Autonomous Systems

Xuping Xu and Panos J. Antsaklis

International Journal of Hybrid Systems
Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 33-60, March 2003

Abstract—In this paper, optimal timing control problems for a class of hybrid autonomous systems are studied. In particular, we focus on problems in which a prespecified sequence of active subsystems is given and propose an approach to find local optimal switching time instants. The main contributions of the paper are the derivation and computation of the derivatives of the cost with respect to the switching time instants, which then facilitate the application of nonlinear optimization techniques to locate the optimal switching time instants. The approach is then applied to general quadratic problems for hybrid autonomous systems with linear subsystems and state jumps, where it is shown that the special structure of such problems can lead to reduced computational effort. Examples illustrate the results.

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