For control engineers, optimal control is a tool to design a primal controller which secures system stability and fulfills a certain set of specifications via the optimization of a specific performance index. In this way, troublesome trial-and-error controller tuning procedures are avoided. The next step is to assess the possibility of practical implementation, and this usually leads to a need to implement some controller trade-offs. To this end, this book aims to construct bridges between conventional parameter optimization and the methods of optimal control theory. Optimal Control Engineering with Matlab teaches students efficiently how to apply the well-known standard optimal control theory as well as recently developed methods for the practical implementation of optimal controllers for dynamic systems. In this book, the author uses his experience gained over twenty-five years of teaching and supervising graduate and postgraduate students in many engineering specializations to communicate the essentials of a very important branch of control system theory to a new generation of engineering students.