Optimal Control of Nonlinear Switched Systems: Computational Methods and Applications

A switched system is a dynamic system that operates by switching between different subsystems or modes. Such systems exhibit both continuous and discrete characteristics—a dual nature that makes designing effective control policies a challenging task. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the latest computational techniques for generating optimal control laws for switched systems with nonlinear dynamics and continuous inequality constraints. We discuss computational strategiesfor optimizing both the times at which a switched system switches from one mode to another (the so-called switching times) and the sequence in which a switched system operates its various possible modes (the so-called switching sequence). These strategies involve novel combinations of the control parameterization method, the timescaling transformation, and bilevel programming and binary relaxation techniques. We conclude the paper by discussing a number of switched system optimal control models arising in practical applications

Global optimal design of IIR filters via constraint transcription and filled function methods

In this paper, we consider a globally optimal design of IIR filters. We formulate the design problem as a nonconvex optimization problem with a continuous inequality constraint and a nonconvex constraint. To solve this problem, the constraint transcription method is applied to tackle the continuous inequality constraint. In order to avoid the obtained solution being on the boundary of the feasible set, more than one initial points are used. Moreover, since the objective and the constraints are nonconvex functions, there may be many local minima. To address this problem, the filled function method is applied to escape from the local minima. Some numerical computer simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method