I. Michael Ross
Isaac Michael Ross is a Distinguished Professor and Program Director of Control and Optimization at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He has published a highly-regarded textbook on optimal control theory and seminal papers in pseudospectral optimal control theory, energy-sink theory, the optimization and deflection of near-Earth asteroids and comets, robotics, attitude dynamics and control, orbital mechanics, real-time optimal control, unscented optimal control, continuous optimization and aeromaneuvering guidance and control. The Kang–Ross–Gong theorem, Ross' lemma, Ross' time constant, the Ross–Fahroo lemma, and the Ross–Fahroo pseudospectral method are all named after him. According to a report published by Stanford University, Ross is one of the world's top 2% of scientists.
Theoretical contributions
Although Ross has made contributions to energy-sink theory, attitude dynamics and control and planetary defense, he is best known for work on pseudospectral optimal control. In 2001, Ross and Fahroo announced the covector mapping principle, first, as a special result in pseudospectral optimal control, and later as a general result in optimal control. This principle was based on the Ross–Fahroo lemma which proves that dualization and discretization are not necessarily commutative operations and that certain steps must be taken to promote commutation. When discretization is commutative with dualization, then, under appropriate conditions, Pontryagin's minimum principle emerges as a consequence of the convergence of the discretization.Together with F. Fahroo, W. Kang and Q. Gong, Ross proved a series of results on the convergence of pseudospectral discretizations of optimal control problems. Ross and his coworkers showed that the Legendre and Chebyshev pseudospectral discretizations converge to an optimal solution of a problem under the mild condition of boundedness of variations.