Optimal control of linear delay systems via hybrid of block-pulse and Legendre polynomials (Q705928)

It is not taken into account `a priori' that any extremal problem with delay leads to formally equivalent ODEs with both delay and advance (or, as Elsgolts has shown long ago, to neutral discrete systems). The explorations start with a system of coupled ODEs with specified boundary values. Even if the ODEs are linear, the determination of the corresponding eigenvalues constitutes a nonlinear problem. If the sought solution is imbedded in an expansion in terms of known functions forming a complete set, with undetermined coefficients \(a_m\), then the resulting algebraic system will be of infinite order. As is well known, successive truncation does not lead in general (cf. Kantorovich) to convergent sequences of the \(a_m\). If exceptionally the sequences of the \(a_m\) do converge, a `Gibbs overshoot' will occur at every point of discontinuity. -- The authors admit that the results of their experimentation are `not entirely satisfactory', but give no explicit cue why this is so.