Switching-time computation for bang-bang control laws

We obtain improvements and give extensions to the switching time computation (STC) method, which is used to compute the switching times for bang-bang control laws. We first report a considerable computational improvement on the STC method as applied to a nonlinear system with one control input. The second contribution of this paper is the extension and implementation of the STC method for two control inputs. In bang-bang control calculations it is a usual practice to consider all possible combinations of the switchings and then carry out the computations with a large set of switching parameters. We introduce a novel scheme for the switching times for two inputs which results in far fewer switching parameters to calculate.