We discuss a biologically inspired cooperative control strategy which allows a group of autonomous systems to solve optimal control problems with free final time and partially constrained final state. The proposed strategy, termed "generalized sampled local pursuit" (GSLP), mimics the way in which ants optimize their foraging trails, and guides the group toward an optimal solution, starting from an initial feasible trajectory. Under GSLP, an optimal control problem is solved in many "short" segments, which are constructed by group members interacting locally with lower information, communication and storage requirements compared to when the problem is solved all at once. We include a series of simulations that illustrate our approach. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.