Control design for autonomous vehicles: A dynamic optimization perspective

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.