Optimal Trajectory Generation of Dynamic Systems Using Canonical Transformations

Dr. Sunil Agrawal, Mechanical Engineering, CDS Visiting Faculty from Univ. of Delaware

The talk describes an approach for planning and control of dynamic systems that optimizes a cost functional while attaining given end conditions. The solution of this problem has applications in planning of autonomous robots, missiles and air vehicles. The approach presented in the talk is different from the classical solution of this problem using Lagrange multipliers. Here, the structure of a dynamic system is used to explicitly embed the state equations into the cost functional, thereby, eliminating the use of Lagrange multipliers. This approach can be applied to classes of linear and nonlinear systems such as 'feedback linearizable' or that have a 'differentially flat' form. The talk will present the theory along with experiments on a planar free-floating robot and a spring-mass-damper system.