Based on the results of over 10 years of research and development by the authors, this book presents a broad cross section of dynamic programming (DP) techniques applied to the optimization of dynamical systems. The intention of the research effort was to develop a robust path planning/trajectory optimization tool that did not require an initial guess, partially met with a combination of DP and homotopy algorithms. DP algorithms are presented here with a theoretical development, and their successful application to a variety of practical engineering problems is emphasized. The organization of...