AN ALGORITHM FOR TIME-OPTIMAL CONTROL-PROBLEMS

A numerical procedure to complete nonsingular, time-optimal solutions for nonlinear systems, which have fired initial and final states, and are linear and bounded in control, is presented. Using the Pontryagin' s Minimum Principle, the corresponding nonlinear two-point boundary-va lue problem is formulated and solved by combination of the forward-bac kward and the shooting methods. The forward-backward procedure generat es a good guess of the initial costates, which is crucial for the conv ergence of the shooting method. Numerical example of a two-link manipu lator illustrates the proposed approach and the convergence of the pro cedure.