Optimal Control of Nonconvex Sweeping Processes with Variable Time via Finite-Difference Approximations

The paper is devoted to the study of a new class of optimal control problems for nonsmooth dynamical systems governed by nonconvex discontinuous differential inclusions of the sweeping type with involving variable time into optimization. We develop a novel version of the method of discrete approximations of its own qualitative and numerical importance with establishing its well-posedness and strong convergence to optimal solutions of the controlled sweeping process. Using advanced tools of variational analysis and generalized differentiation leads us to deriving new necessary conditions for optimal solutions to discrete approximation problems, which serve as suboptimality conditions for the original continuous-time controlled sweeping process. The obtained results are applied to a class of motion models of practical interest, where the established necessary conditions are used to investigate the agents' interactions and to develop an algorithm for calculating optimal solutions.