Control design for autonomous vehicles involves a number of issues that are
not satisfactorily addressed in classical control systems theory. There is
typically the need for prescribing and commanding a collection of interact
ing dynamic control systems in order to meet the desired requirements for o
verall behavior, whereas conventional control design has only one system to
govern. This context requires a whole new set of concepts, methods, and to
ols that are adapted to capture the integration of logical commands, contin
uous time evolution, and discrete event dynamics. A rapidly growing and ext
ensive body of literature testifies to the valuable heritage of control sys
tems that will address the challenges ahead. Several new issues arise in at
tempting a principled design of a specific system, and it is essential that
they be resolved in order to ground the effort for a suitable control desi
gn framework. Furthermore, control design cannot be dissociated front the i
mplementation phase, which introduces a wide range of challenges in communi
cation and computation. This paper provides an overview of three control pr
ojects designed at the Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory, and di
scusses the new challenges from the dynamic optimization viewpoint.