Exact Truncation and Radial Rigidity in Time-Optimal Control

Abstract

We consider minimum-time control for the linear system $$ \dot{z}(t)=Az(t)+Bu(t),\qquad \|u\|_{L^\infty(0,\infty;\mathbb{R}^m)}\leq 1, $$ with $A\in\mathbb R^{n\times n}$ and $B\in\mathbb R^{n\times m}$. While the individual point-target and ball-target problems are classical, we study a different question: when are their optimal controls exactly compatible, in the sense that, for every nonzero initial state $x$ and all sufficiently small $\varepsilon>0$, the optimal control for the tolerance ball $\overline{B}_\varepsilon(0)$ is precisely the restriction of the point-target optimal control? We prove that this {\it{exact truncation}} property is equivalent to the rigidity conditions $$ B B^\top=βI_n,\qquad A+A^\top=2aI_n, \qquad β>0,\; a\leq 0, $$ and also to Euclidean radiality of the point-target minimum-time function. Thus exact truncation holds precisely when the sublevel sets of the point-target minimum-time function are Euclidean balls centered at the origin, matching the geometry of the tolerance targets. Moreover, the local property automatically extends to every $0<\varepsilon<|x|$, and the resulting optimal times and point-target optimal feedback are both explicit.