C-DOC: Co-State Desensitized Optimal Control

In this paper, co-states are used to develop a framework that desensitizes the optimal cost. A general formulation for an optimal control problem with fixed final time is considered. The proposed scheme involves elevating the parameters of interest into states, and further augmenting the co-state equations of the optimal control problem to the dynamical model. A running cost that penalizes the co-states of the targeted parameters is then added to the original cost function. The solution obtained by minimizing the augmented cost yields a control which reduces the dispersion of the original cost with respect to parametric variations. The relationship between co-states and the cost-to-go function, for any given control law, is established substantiating the approach.