When the Tyrian princess Dido landed on the North African shore of the Mediterranean sea she was welcomed by a local chieftain. He offered her all the land that she could enclose between the shoreline and a rope of knotted cowhide. While the legend does not tell us, we may assume that Princess Dido arrived at the correct solution by stretching the rope into the shape of a circular arc and thereby maximized the area of the land upon which she was to found Carthage. This story of the founding of Carthage is apocryphal. Nonetheless it is probably the first account of a problem of the kind that inspired an entire mathematical discipline, the calculus of variations and its extensions such as the theory of optimal control. This book is intended to present an introductory treatment of the calculus of variations in Part I and of optimal control theory in Part II. The discussion in Part I is restricted to the simplest problem of the calculus of variations. The topic is entirely classical; all of the basic theory had been developed before the turn of the century. Consequently the material comes from many sources; however, those most useful to me have been the books of Oskar Bolza and of George M. Ewing. Part II is devoted to the elementary aspects of the modern extension of the calculus of variations, the theory of optimal control of dynamical systems.

This multi-authored volume presents selected papers from the Eighth Workshop on Dynamics and Control. Many of the papers represent significant advances in this area of research, and cover the development of control methods, including the control of dynamical systems subject to mixed constraints on both the control and state variables, and the development of a control design method for flexible manipulators with mismatched uncertainties. Advances in dynamic systems are presented, particularly in game-theoretic approaches and also the applications of dynamic systems methodology to social and environmental problems, for example, the concept of virtual biospheres in modeling climate change in terms of dynamical systems.

This volume is a collection of contributions to the subject of multicriteria decision making and differential games, all of which are based wholly or in part on papers that have appeared in the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications. The authors take this opportunity to revise, update, or enlarge upon their earlier publications. The theory of multicriteria decision making and differential games is concerned with situations in which a single decision maker is faced with a multiplicity of usually incompatible criteria, performance indices or payoffs, or in which a number of decision makers, or players, must take into account criteria each of which depends on the decisions of all the decision makers. The first six chapters are devoted to situations involving a single decision maker, or a number of decision makers in complete collaboration and thus being in effect a single decision maker. Chapters I -IV treat various topics in the theory of domination structures and nondominated decisions. Chapter V presents a discussion of efficient, or Pareto-optimal, decisions. The approach to multicriteria decision making via preference relations is explored in Chapter VI. When there is more than one decision maker, cooperation, as well as noncooperation, is possible. Chapters VII and VIII deal with the topic of coalitions in a dynamic setting, while Chapters IX and X address the situation of two unequal decision makers, a leader and a follower.

When the Tyrian princess Dido landed on the North African shore of the Mediterranean sea she was welcomed by a local chieftain. He offered her all the land that she could enclose between the shoreline and a rope of knotted cowhide. While the legend does not tell us, we may assume that Princess Dido arrived at the correct solution by stretching the rope into the shape of a circular arc and thereby maximized the area of the land upon which she was to found Carthage. This story of the founding of Carthage is apocryphal. Nonetheless it is probably the first account of a problem of the kind that inspired an entire mathematical discipline, the calculus of variations and its extensions such as the theory of optimal control. This book is intended to present an introductory treatment of the calculus of variations in Part I and of optimal control theory in Part II. The discussion in Part I is restricted to the simplest problem of the calculus of variations. The topic is entirely classical; all of the basic theory had been developed before the turn of the century. Consequently the material comes from many sources; however, those most useful to me have been the books of Oskar Bolza and of George M. Ewing. Part II is devoted to the elementary aspects of the modern extension of the calculus of variations, the theory of optimal control of dynamical systems.