Optimal impulse control problems with time delays: An illustrative example

For impulse control systems described by a measure driven differential equation, depending linearly on the measure, it is customary to interpret the state trajectory corresponding to an impulse control, specified by a measure, as the limit of state trajectories associated with some sequence of conventional controls approximating the measure. It is known that, when the measure is vector valued, it is possible that different choices of approximating sequences for the measure give rise to different limiting state trajectories. If the measure is scalar valued, however, there is a unique limiting trajectory. Now consider impulse control systems, in which the right side of the measure driven differential equation depends on both the current and delayed states. In recent work by the authors it has been shown that, for such impulse control systems with time delay, the state trajectory corresponding to a given measure may be non-unique, even when the measure is scalar valued. It was also shown that each limiting state trajectory can be identified with the unique state trajectory associated with some measure together with a family of ‘attached controls’. (The attached controls capture the nature of the measure approximation.) The authors also derived a maximum principle governing minimizers for a general class of impulse optimal control problems with time delay, in which the domain of the optimization problem comprises measures coupled with a family of ‘attached controls’. The purpose of this paper is both to illustrate, by means of an example, this newly discovered non-uniqueness phenomenon and to provide the first application of the new maximum principle, to investigate minimizers for scalar input impulse optimal control problems with time delay, in circumstances when limiting state trajectories associated with a given measure control are not unique. The example is an optimal control problem, for which the underlying control system is a forced harmonic oscillator, with scalar impulse control, in which the control gain is a nonlinear function of the current and delayed states.