9414472 Bentsman This International Cooperative Research Project involves collaborative research effort between the PI and five leading researchers from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. Innovative techniques are developed for the control of mechanical systems subjected to energy and magnitude constraints. Such control situations are encountered in many diverse applications, e.g., reorientation and maneuvering of spacecrafts, and positioning of robotic manipulators and flying heads in hard disk drives. In this project, mathematical models are formulated for complex nonlinear mechanical systems that admit both impulsive and conventional control inputs. Optimal solutions are generated under the integral and magnitude constraints for this class of systems using a generalized control approach in a closed-loop setting. ***
