METHOD TO SOLVE THE NONLINEAR INFINITE HORIZON OPTIMAL CONTROL PROBLEM WITH APPLICATION TO THE TRACK CONTROL OF A MOBILE ROBOT

Abstract

We present a numerical method to solve the infinite time horizon optimal control problem for low dimensional nonlinear systems. Starting from the linear-quadratic approximation close to the origin, the extremal field is efficiently calculated by solving the Euler–Lagrange equations backward in time. The resulting controller is given numerically on an interpolation grid. We use the method to obtain the optimal track controller for a mobile robot. The result is a globally asymptotically stable nonlinear controller, obtained without any specific insight into the system dynamics.