Transcription Methods for Trajectory Optimization: a beginners tutorial

Abstract

This report is an introduction to transcription methods for trajectory optimization techniques. The first few sections describe the two classes of transcription methods (shooting \& simultaneous) that are used to convert the trajectory optimization problem into a general constrained optimization form. The middle of the report discusses a few extensions to the basic methods, including how to deal with hybrid systems (such as walking robots). The final section goes over a variety of implementation details.