A Maximum Principle for the controlled Sweeping Process

Abstract: We consider the free endpoint Mayer problem for a controlled Moreau process, the control acting as a perturbation of the dynamics driven by the normal cone, and derive necessary optimality conditions of Pontryagin's Maximum Principle type. The results are also discussed through an example. We combine techniques from M. Sene, L. Thibault, Journal of Nonlinear and Convex Analysis 15 (2014) and from M. Brokate and P. Krejci, Discrete and continuous dynamical systems series B. Volume 18 (2013), 331-348, which in particular deals with a different but related control problem. Our assumptions include the smoothness of the boundary of the moving set $C(t)$, but do not require its strict convexity. Rather, a kind of inward/outward pointing condition is assumed on the reference optimal trajectory at the times where the boundary of $C(t)$ is touched. The state space is finite dimensional.