Local Solutions of the Dynamic Programming Equations and the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman PDE

Abstract

We present methods for locally solving the Dynamic Programming Equations (DPE) and the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) PDE that arise in the infinite horizon optimal control problem. The method for solving the DPE is the discrete time version of Al'brecht's procedure for locally approximating the solution of the HJB. We also prove the existence of the smooth solutions to the DPE that has the same Taylor series expansions as the formal solutions. Our procedure for solving the HJB PDE numerically begins with Al'brecht's local solution as the initial approximation and uses some Lyapunov criteria to piece together polynomial estimates. The polynomials are generated using the method in the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya Theorem.