Transcription Methods for Trajectory Optimization: a beginners tutorial

TL;DR

This tutorial introduces transcription methods for trajectory optimization, explaining shooting and simultaneous approaches, their extensions for hybrid systems, and implementation details, aimed at beginners in the field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive beginner-friendly overview of transcription methods, including extensions and practical implementation guidance.

Findings

Clarifies differences between shooting and simultaneous methods

Discusses handling hybrid systems in trajectory optimization

Provides practical insights into implementation details

Abstract

This report is an introduction to transcription methods for trajectory optimization techniques. The first few sections describe the two classes of transcription methods (shooting \& simultaneous) that are used to convert the trajectory optimization problem into a general constrained optimization form. The middle of the report discusses a few extensions to the basic methods, including how to deal with hybrid systems (such as walking robots). The final section goes over a variety of implementation details.