The past few decades have witnessed a significant research effort in the field of Lyapunov model based control design. In parallel, optimal control and optimization model based design have also expanded their range of applications, and nowadays, receding horizon approaches can be considered a mature field for particular classes of control systems.

In this talk, I will argue that Lyapunov based techniques play an important role for analysis of model based optimization methodologies and moreover, both approaches can be combined for control design resulting in powerful frameworks with formal guarantees of robustness, stability, performance, and safety. Illustrative examples in the area of motion control of autonomous robotic vehicles will be presented for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).