The Minimum Principle and Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman Equation

Abstract

This chapter is devoted upon optimality, a topic in which the central result is the Pontryagin’s minimum principle. This important result is briefly approached from the classical calculus of variation. We show that the classical calculus of variation has some major limitations to modern control problems and motivate Pontryagin’s minimum principle. The Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman method is discussed as an alternative approach to gain first-order necessary conditions for optimality. It is shown that both approaches correspond to each other under restrictive assumptions. The original Pontryagin’s minimum principle for continuous optimal control problems is not suitable for hybrid optimal control problems. However, a quite natural reformulation of the hybrid optimal control problem admits the classical theory for deduction of first-order necessary conditions in the sense of Pontryagin. The charm of this methodology is its comprehensible derivation.