A Structured Optimal Controller with Feed-Forward for Transportation

TL;DR

This paper presents a closed-form, structured optimal control solution for transportation models on path graphs that incorporates feed-forward for disturbances and enables local implementation through simple graph sweeps.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, highly structured optimal controller with a closed-form solution that efficiently handles disturbances and is implementable via local communication.

Findings

Closed-form optimal controller for transportation on path graphs.

Controller accounts for planned disturbances using feed-forward.

Implementation requires only local communication through two graph sweeps.

Abstract

We study an optimal control problem for a simple transportation model on a path graph. We give a closed form solution for the optimal controller, which can also account for planned disturbances using feed-forward. The optimal controller is highly structured, which allows the controller to be implemented using only local communication, conducted through two sweeps through the graph.