A Constraining Hyperplane Technique for State Variable Constrained Optimal Control Problems

Abstract

A new approach to the numerical solution of optimal control problems with state-variable inequality constraints is presented. It is shown that the concept of constraining hyperplanes may be used to approximate the original problem with a problem where the constraints are of a mixed state-control variable type. The efficiency and the accuracy of the combination of constraining hyperplanes and a second-order differential dynamic programming algorithm are investigated on problems of different complexity, and comparisons are made with the slack-variable and the penalty-function techniques.