Jerrold Marsden on Discrete Mechanics and Optimal Control

Nokia Distinguished Lecture: Jerrold Marsden on Discrete Mechanics and Optimal Control
Engineering and Control & Dynamical Systems
California Institute of Technology
Abstract:
We and Nature try to optimize things all the time; find the shortest route to the grocery store, find the most efficient way to throw a discus, cats turning themselves over efficiently, etc. Optimal control is about finding control forces to perform optimal ways of carrying out a task. Many such systems are mechanical and special techniques for computing optimal controls in mechanics will be presented. These techniques are based on recent progress in discrete mechanics. The techniques will be illustrated by systems such as falling cats, reorienting a network of satellites, optimal space mission design, systems with constraints (such as a satellite with momentum wheels), helicopter dynamics, and efficient 2D and 3D robotic walkers.

Bio:
Jerrold Marsden is a professor of Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech. He has done extensive research in the area of geometric mechanics, with applications to rigid body systems, fluid mechanics, elasticity theory, plasma physics, as well as to general field theory. His work in dynamical systems and control theory emphasizes how it relates to mechanical systems and systems with symmetry. He is one of the original founders in the early 1970's of reduction theory for mechanical systems with symmetry, which remains an active and much studied area of research today. He has won a number of awards for his research.

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Science & Technology

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[millamulisha]

Working through the derivation of the Euler-Lagrange equation, and its application to a number of problems in newtonian mechanics, was nothing short of a revolution to me... I really love Optimal Control Theory now. So many wonderful questions to be answered... Great lecture.