Optimal control of a slot car racer
Johann Penner, Tristan Schlögl, Sigrid Leyendecker · PAMM · 2017
Abstract In this contribution, we present a simulation method for the optimal control of a mechatronic system that is based on discrete variational calculus and apply it to compute the time‐minimal path of a slot car racer. Here, the DMOC (Discrete Mechanics and Optimal Control [4]) method is used to generate offline optimal trajectories for the electro‐mechanically coupled system, i.e. sequences of discrete configurations and sequences of driving voltages. The time‐minimal path is achieved by the choice of different cost functions, the sum of time steps, the negative sum of the quadratic momenta and the negative sum of the quadratic velocities. Simulation results show that the momentum formulation yields the lowest number of iterations. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)