Stochastic Optimal Control of a Solar Car

Boland, John; Gaitsgory, Vladimir; Howlett, Phil; Pudney, Peter

doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-6099-6_6

John Boland⁴,
Vladimir Gaitsgory⁴,
Phil Howlett⁴ &
…
Peter Pudney⁴

Part of the book series: Applied Optimization ((APOP,volume 47))

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Abstract

The World Solar Challenge is a 3000km race for solar powered cars across the Australian continent from Darwin to Adelaide. Each car is powered by a panel of photovoltaic cells which convert solar irradiance to electrical power. The power can be used directly to drive the car or stored for later use. In this paper the solar radiation is modelled as a Markov process and we use the Bellman Principle of dynamic programming to find an optimal control policy that maximises the expected value of the total distance to be travelled by the car on the remaining race days. We illustrate the general results with some basic examples.

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References

Gates, D.J. and Westcott, M.R. (1996), Solar cars and variational problems equivalent to shortest paths. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 34, 2, 428–436.
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Howlett, P., Pudney, P., Tarnopolskaya, T. and Gates, D. (1997), Optimal driving strategy for a solar car on a level road. IMA J. Maths. Applied in Business and Industry, 8, 59–81.
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Howlett, P.G. and Pudney, P.J. (1998), An optimal driving strategy for a solar powered car on an undulating road. Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems, 4, 553–567.
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Authors and Affiliations

Centre for Industrial and Applicable Mathematics, University of South Australia, Australia
John Boland, Vladimir Gaitsgory, Phil Howlett & Peter Pudney

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John Boland
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Vladimir Gaitsgory
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Phil Howlett
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Peter Pudney
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Alexander Rubinov
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Curtin University of Technology, WA, Australia
Barney Glover

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Boland, J., Gaitsgory, V., Howlett, P., Pudney, P. (2001). Stochastic Optimal Control of a Solar Car. In: Rubinov, A., Glover, B. (eds) Optimization and Related Topics. Applied Optimization, vol 47. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6099-6_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6099-6_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-4844-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6099-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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