This book is designed to be a comprehensive treatment of linear methods to optimal control of bilinear systems. The unified theme of this book is the use of dynamic programming in order to simplify and decompose required computations for the optimal control of bilinear-quadratic systems. There are numerous examples of bilinear control systems that provide great challenges to engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists: these include nuclear reactors, missile intercept problems and mechanical brake systems. The book also examines two special classes of bilinear-quadratic control problems: namely singularly perturbed and weakly coupled bilinear control systems. The usefulness of the presented methods to these two types of control problem is demonstrated by several real control system examples.
