Mathematics

How should we drive a car from between two some given points if we want to minimize the consumption of the fuel? What if, instead, we want to find the shortest path? And the quickest? Optimal Control Theory is the branch of Mathematics that tries to formalize this kind of problems and gives rigorous solutions.In my talk, I will first give a general introduction to Optimal Control Theory with some concrete examples. Then, I will discuss some piece of work from my (ongoing) PhD thesis concerning optimality conditions of second order.