On the Hybrid Minimum Principle

Abstract: The Hybrid Minimum Principle (HMP) is established for the optimal control of deterministic hybrid systems with both autonomous and controlled switchings and jumps where state jumps at the switching instants are permitted to be accompanied by changes in the dimension of the state space. First order variational analysis is performed via the needle variation methodology and the necessary optimality conditions are established in the form of the HMP. A feature of special interest in this work is the explicit presentations of boundary conditions on the Hamiltonians and the adjoint processes before and after switchings and jumps. In addition to an analytic example, the HMP results are illustrated for the optimal control of an electric vehicle with transmission, where the modelling of the powertrain requires the consideration of both autonomous and controlled switchings accompanied by dimension changes.