Abstract
In this paper an ultraspherical integral method is proposed to solve optimal control problems governed by ordinary differential equations. Ultraspherical approximation method reduced the problem to a constrained optimization problem. Penalty leap frog method is presented to solve the resulting constrained optimization problem. Error estimates for the ultraspherical approximations are derived and a technique that gives an optimal approximation of the problems is introduced. Numerical results are included to confirm the efficiency and accuracy of the method.