Traditional control systems have been designed to exercise control at
regularly spaced time instants. When a discrete version of the system
dynamics is used, a constant sampling interval is assumed and a new
control value is calculated and exercised at each time instant. In this
paper we formulate a new control scheme, {\it temporal control}, in which
we not only calculate the control value but also decide the time instants
when the new values are to be used. Taking a discrete, linear,
time-invariant system, and a cost function which reflects a cost for
computation of the control values, as an example, we show the feasibility
of using this scheme. We formulate the temporal control scheme as a
feedback scheme and, through a numerical example, demonstrate the
significant reduction in cost through the use of temporal control.
(Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-81
