Optimal Control through Biologically-Inspired Pursuit

Abstract

Inspired by the process by which ants gradually optimize their foraging trails, this paper investigates the cooperative solution of a class of free-final time, partially-constrained final state optimal control problems by a group of dynamic systems. A cooperative, pursuit-based algorithm is proposed for finding optimal solutions by iteratively optimizing an initial feasible control. The proposed algorithm requires only short-range, limited interactions between group members, and avoids the need for a "global map" of the environment on which the group evolves. The performance of the algorithm is illustrated in a series of numerical experiments.