Section: Overall Objectives

Scientific directions

Commands is a team devoted to dynamic optimization, both for deterministic and stochastic systems. This includes the following approaches: trajectory optimization, deterministic and stochastic optimal control, stochastic programming, dynamic programming and Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation.

Our aim is to derive new and powerful algorithms for solving numerically these problems, with applications in several industrial fields. While the numerical aspects are the core of our approach it happens that the study of convergence of these algorithms and the verification of their well-posedness and accuracy raises interesting and difficult theoretical questions, such as, for trajectory optimization: qualification conditions and second-order optimality condition, well-posedness of the shooting algorithm, estimates for discretization errors; for the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman approach: accuracy estimates, strong uniqueness principles when state constraints are present, for stochastic programming problems: sensitivity analysis.