An Introduction to Optimal Control Theory

This paper is intended for the beginner. It is not a state­ of—the—art paper for research workers in the field of control theory. Its purpose is to introduce the reader to some of the problems and results in control theory, to illustrate the application of these re­ sults, and to provide a guide for his further reading on this subject. I have tried to motivate the results with examples, especial­ ly with one canonical, simple example described in §3. Many results, such as the maximum princi...