Trajectory Optimization Based on Interval Analysis

Trajectory optimization has been a large field of research for many years. The drawback is that for non-convex, constrained problems practically all available solvers cannot guarantee that the globally optimal trajectory is found. Interval analysis based solvers however can provide this guarantee. Interval analysis has been applied to trajectory optimization before, but the previously presented methods suffered from major drawbacks which limited their application to small scale problems. In this paper a new interval based method is introduced which incorporates state parameterization to prevent explicit integration. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying it to a spacecraft formation flying optimization problem. The results are compared with a gradient based solver and it is shown that the interval method is guaranteed to find the global optimal solution. Finally the first steps for another new trajectory optimization method based on interval analysis and direct collocation are presented