Safe Platooning in Automated Highway Systems Part I: Safety Regions Design

This paper addresses the problem of designing safe controllers for vehicle manuevering in Automated Highway Systems (AHS) in which traffic is organized into platoons of closely spaced vehicles. Conditions to achieve safe platooning under normal modes of operation are investigated. The notion of safety is related with the absence of collisions that exceed a given relative velocity threshold. State dependent safety regions for the platoons are designed in such a way that, whenever the state of a platoon is inside these safety regions, it is guaranteed that platoon maneuvering will be safe and follow the behavior prescribed by the finite state machines that control vehicles manuevers. It is shown that it is possible to design control laws that keep the state of the platoons inside these safety regions. The results obtained allow one to decouple the controllers for the regulation of the manuevers and the finite state machines that determine their proper sequence in AHS architectures. The overall complexity of the design and verification of the AHS as an hybrid system is therefore greatly reduced.     

Safe Platooning in Automated Highway Systems Part I: Safety Regions Design

This paper addresses the problem of designing safe controllers for vehicle manuevering in Automated Highway Systems (AHS) in which traffic is organized into platoons of closely spaced vehicles. Conditions to achieve safe platooning under normal modes of operation are investigated. The notion of safety is related with the absence of collisions that exceed a given relative velocity threshold. State dependent safety regions for the platoons are designed in such a way that, whenever the state of a platoon is inside these safety regions, it is guaranteed that platoon maneuvering will be safe and follow the behavior prescribed by the finite state machines that control vehicles manuevers. It is shown that it is possible to design control laws that keep the state of the platoons inside these safety regions. The results obtained allow one to decouple the controllers for the regulation of the manuevers and the finite state machines that determine their proper sequence in AHS architectures. The overall complexity of the design and verification of the AHS as an hybrid system is therefore greatly reduced.     

Safety Oriented Maneuvers for IVHS

The IVHS architecture of the California PATH program organizes traffic into platoons of closely spaced vehicles. Platoons are formed and broken up by two longitudinal control maneuvers, the merge and the split. A third longitudinal maneuver, decelerate to change lane, allows a platoon switching from one lane to another to enter its new lane at a safe spacing and speed. The maneuvers, particularly the merge, can be potentially hazardous. In a merge, the cars in the trail platoon are moving faster than those in the lead platoon, while the gap separating the two platoons is smaller than usual. A sudden deceleration by the lead platoon could cause a high-speed collision. If the relative velocities of the merging platoons can be constrained so that they are guaranteed never to collide at a high relative velocity, the merge can be considered safe. A maximum safe velocity for the trail platoon can be found for any given spacing and lead-platoon velocity. This paper presents a merge maneuver in which the velocity of the trail platoon never exceeds the maximum safe velocity. The controller switches among several feedback control laws that keep the velocity of the trail platoon inside a safe region and within comfort limits on jerk and acceleration, under normal circumstances. This merge maneuver can be considered to be the fastest merge strategy mat does not violate bounds on safety and comfort. The controller is also more robust to changes in the vehicles' acceleration capability than those that use a desired open-loop trajectory

The control approach used for the merge maneuver can be applied to the other maneuvers to ensure that they never result in a collision. The switching controllers for the split and decelerate to change lane maneuvers that are safe and yield a more comfortable ride than those that track a timed trajectory are also presented.     

车-车协同下无人驾驶车辆的换道汇入控制方法

多车协同驾驶是智能车路系统领域的研究热点之一,可有效降低道路交通控制管理的复杂程度,减少环境污染的同时保障道路交通安全。基于多车协同驾驶控制结构,提出了一种无人驾驶车辆换道汇入的驾驶模型及策略,系统分析了多车协同运行状态的稳定条件。在综合分析无人驾驶车辆换道汇入的协作准则、安全性评估后,基于高阶多项式方法,结合车辆运行特性,通过引入乘坐舒适性的指标函数,设计得到无人驾驶车辆换道汇入的有效运动轨迹。通过研究汇入车辆与车队中汇入点前、后各车辆的运动关系,详细分析车辆发生碰撞的类型和影响因素,给出避免碰撞的条件准则,从而确保无人驾驶车辆汇入过程中多车行驶的安全性和稳定性。基于车辆运动学建立车辆位置误差模型,结合系统大范围渐进稳定的条件,选取线速度和角速度作为输入,应用李雅普诺夫稳定性理论和Backstepping非线性控制算法,设计了无人驾驶车辆换道汇入后的路径跟踪控制器。仿真试验和实车试验结果表明：所设计的换道汇入路径是可行、安全的,控制器具有良好的跟踪效果,纵向和横向的距离误差在15 cm以内,方向偏差的相对误差在10%以内。研究结果为智能车路系统中的多车状态变迁与协同驾驶研究提供了参考,可服务于未来道路交通安全设计和评价。     

A New Control Approach for Platoon Operations during Vehicle Exit/Entry

A new platoon control concept is introduced, called Back Control, in which the controller of a given vehicle utilizes state information from the lead, preceding, and following vehicles, as well as the vehicle itself. Simulations are carried out on two non-steady state platoon operations - vehicle exit and vehicle entry from a platoon. A previously developed longitudinal controller is utilized as a reference to the proposed Back controller and a ride quality index is used to assess passenger comfort in these simulations. It is shown that the Back controller has advantages over the reference controller in these two operations and that it is therefore worth examining as a candidate controller of vehicular platoons, especially in non-nominal operations.     

纯电动商用车异质队列的多目标控制

队列行驶的研究能有效解决商用车货运安全、能耗浪费和环境污染等问题,但现有研究多基于单一跟车目标控制的匀质队列,这在货运场景中无法达到很好的控制效果。本文中构造了纯电动异质商用车队列,为其设计了分布式非线性模型预测控制器。根据道路环境信息和车辆跟车、安全、舒适和节能等特性,分别建立了领航车和跟随车的控制器模型,实现异质队列的多目标控制。为验证所提出控制方法的有效性,由5辆动力学特性相异的商用车组成队列,并搭建了控制仿真平台进行Trucksim/Simulink联合仿真。结果表明,本文中提出的控制算法能有效实现异质商用车队列的多目标控制,与PID定速巡航控制相比,能耗可降低5.3%以上。     

A Simplified Framework for String Stability Analysis of Automated Vehicles∗

SUMMARY

Automated vehicles traveling in platoons must exhibit stability both individually and as a group, a property referred to as “string stability”. We propose a new framework for evaluating the longitudinal string stability properties of platoons of automated vehicles. In this framework, the platoon is considered to be a mass-spring-damper system with linear characteristics. The resulting closed-loop representation yields transfer functions and impulse responses that can be analyzed to determine the string stability properties of the platoon. This framework facilitates qualitative comparisons of the effects of various controller characteristics, such as time headway and intervehicle communication, on string stability.     

A Simplified Framework for String Stability Analysis of Automated Vehicles*

Automated vehicles traveling in platoons must exhibit stability both individually and as a group, a property referred to as “string stability”. We propose a new framework for evaluating the longitudinal string stability properties of platoons of automated vehicles. In this framework, the platoon is considered to be a mass-spring-damper system with linear characteristics. The resulting closed-loop representation yields transfer functions and impulse responses that can be analyzed to determine the string stability properties of the platoon. This framework facilitates qualitative comparisons of the effects of various controller characteristics, such as time headway and intervehicle communication, on string stability.     

Design and Evaluation of Robust Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Systems in Parameter Space

This paper is on the design of cooperative adaptive cruise control systems for automated driving of platoons of vehicles in the longitudinal direction. Longitudinal models of vehicles with simple dynamics, an uncertain first order time constant and vehicle to vehicle communication with a communication delay are used in the vehicle modeling. A robust parameter space approach is developed and applied to the design of the cooperative adaptive cruise control system. D-stability is chosen as the robust performance goal and the feedback PD controller is designed in controller parameter space to achieve this D-stability goal for a range of possible longitudinal dynamics time constants and different values of time gap. Preceding vehicle acceleration is sent to the ego vehicle using vehicle to vehicle communication and a feedforward controller is used in this inter-vehicle loop to improve performance. Simulation results of an eight vehicle platoon of heterogeneous vehicles are presented and evaluated to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed design method. Also, the proposed method is compared with a benchmark controller and the feedback only controller. Time gap regulation and string stability are used to assess performance and the effect of the vehicle to vehicle communication frequency on control system performance is also investigated.     

智能网联车辆交通流优化对交通安全的改善

为改善常规驾驶车辆交通流追尾碰撞交通安全状况,提出智能网联车辆（Connected and Automated Vehicles,CAV）与常规车辆构成的混合交通流车队稳定性优化控制方法。基于全速度差模型,应用集成速度与加速度的多前车反馈构建CAV跟驰模型,考虑CAV混合交通流车辆空间分布的随机性,将各类型局部车队稳定性作为优化目标,以局部车队头车速度扰动为系统输入,以尾车速度扰动为系统输出,应用经典控制理论领域的传递函数法推导局部车队稳定性约束条件;分析关于平衡态速度与CAV反馈系数的车队稳定域,以各类型局部车队能够在任意平衡态速度下均稳定为控制目标,对CAV反馈系数输出进行优化控制;设计高速公路上匝道交通瓶颈数值仿真试验,在不同CAV比例等多种条件下,分析CAV混合交通流优化控制对交通流车辆追尾碰撞风险的影响。研究结果表明：CAV混合交通流优化控制可降低车辆追尾碰撞风险,在碰撞时间阈值小于2 s时,100%比例的CAV交通流可将交通流的车辆追尾碰撞风险降低85.81%以上;在碰撞时间阈值大于2 s时,追尾碰撞风险可降低48.22%～78.80%。所提优化控制方法可有效降低CAV车队优化控制的复杂性,为大规模CAV背景下的混合交通流优化控制以及车辆追尾碰撞交通安全提升策略提供直接理论参考。     

Effects of Model Complexity on the Performance of Automated Vehicle Steering Controllers: Controller Development and Evaluation

SUMMARY

Due to increased traffic congestion and travel times, research in Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS) has focused on automated lateral and headway control. Automated vehicles are seen as a way to increase freeway capacity and vehicle speeds while reducing accidents due to human error. Recent research in automated lateral control has focused on vehicle control during low-g maneuvers. To increase safety, automated lateral controllers will need to recognize and react to emergency situations.

This paper investigates the effects of vehicle and tire model order on the response of automated vehicles to an emergency step lane change using a controller based on linear vehicle and tire models. From these studies it is concluded that control strategies based solely on linear vehicle and tire models are inadequate for emergency vehicle maneuvers.

A strategy is then proposed to automatically control vehicles through emergency maneuvers. Here the response of a nonlinear vehicle model is used with a linear state model to optimize controller gains for nonlinear maneuvers. An emergency step lane change is used as a preliminary test of the method.     

基于非线性模型预测控制的车辆纵向队列协调控制

本文中针对基于分层控制结构的车辆队列上、下层控制缺少联系的问题,提出了车辆队列跟驰与个体车辆动力学稳定性协调控制的思路,其基本思想是在保证队列中个体车辆安全稳定行驶的同时,尽可能实现队列跟驰控制的目标。基于非线性模型预测控制(nonlinear model predictive control,NMPC)方法设计了车辆队列协调控制方案,设计了包括跟驰间距误差、跟驰速度误差以及车速与车轮圆周速度差3个子目标的优化目标函数,将队列跟驰与车辆动力学稳定性的协调控制转化为约束优化控制问题;基于序列二次规划(sequential quadratic programming,SQP)方法进行求解,得到车辆前、后轴的制动/驱动力矩来实现上层决策输出的期望跟驰加速度。基于由3车辆组成的非线性队列模型对控制方案进行了仿真分析,结果表明,所提出的基于NMPC的车辆队列协调控制策略可以在大范围操纵工况下,在保证车辆安全稳定行驶的基础上实现队列的跟驰控制。     

双车道公路超车两难区域研究

基于超车行为分析,提出了双车道公路超车行为的两难区域概念,在该区域内超车车辆既无法完成超车动作又不能在避免与对向车辆相撞前安全避让。应用运动学理论建立了下游车队规模、车速、设计车速与两难区域范围以及安全超车视距之间的关系,发现与超越单车的视距要求相比,超越车队所需的安全视距较大,且随着设计车速、下游车队规模以及车速的增大而增大。并发现当流量或车速较大时,两难区域出现的概率较大,且因驾驶者错误估计引发交通事故的机会增多。最后给出了不同下游车队规模条件下安全超车的速度限制及视距要求,为制定安全行车策略以及道路安全管理提供了理论依据。     

Emergency Braking Control with an Observer-based Dynamic Tire/Road Friction Model and Wheel Angular Velocity Measurement

Summary A control scheme for emergency braking of vehicles is designed. The tire/road friction is described by a LuGre dynamic friction model. The control system output is the pressure in the master cylinder of the brake system. The controller utilizes estimated states for a feedback control law that achieves a near maximum deceleration. The state observer is designed using linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques. The analysis shows that using the wheel angular speed information exclusively is not sufficient to rapidly estimate the velocity and relative velocity, due to the fact that the dynamical system is almost unobservable with this measurement as output. Findings are confirmed by simulation results that show that the estimated vehicle velocity and relative velocity converge slowly to their true values, even though the internal friction state and friction parameters converge quickly. The proposed control system has two main advantages when compared with an antilock braking system (ABS): (1) it produces a source of a priori information regarding safe spacing between vehicles that can be used to increase safety levels in the highway; and (2) it achieves a near optimal braking strategy with less chattering.     

Emergency Braking Control with an Observer-based Dynamic Tire/Road Friction Model and Wheel Angular Velocity Measurement

Summary A control scheme for emergency braking of vehicles is designed. The tire/road friction is described by a LuGre dynamic friction model. The control system output is the pressure in the master cylinder of the brake system. The controller utilizes estimated states for a feedback control law that achieves a near maximum deceleration. The state observer is designed using linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques. The analysis shows that using the wheel angular speed information exclusively is not sufficient to rapidly estimate the velocity and relative velocity, due to the fact that the dynamical system is almost unobservable with this measurement as output. Findings are confirmed by simulation results that show that the estimated vehicle velocity and relative velocity converge slowly to their true values, even though the internal friction state and friction parameters converge quickly. The proposed control system has two main advantages when compared with an antilock braking system (ABS): (1) it produces a source of a priori information regarding safe spacing between vehicles that can be used to increase safety levels in the highway; and (2) it achieves a near optimal braking strategy with less chattering.     

考虑参数不确定性的无人车预设性能路径跟踪控制

为保证无人车在参数不确定性影响下的路径跟踪具有预设控制精度,提出一种具有预设跟踪误差性能的路径跟踪输出反馈控制方法。根据横向预瞄偏差建立了路径跟踪二阶误差积分系统,在考虑轮胎侧偏刚度参数摄动及车辆横向速度未知的情况下,利用扩张状态方法建立了含有复合未知项的控制模型,再通过设计线性扩张状态观测器对系统未知状态和模型不确定项进行估计,并进一步证明了观测误差的一致有界收敛性。针对无人车路径跟踪瞬态和稳态性能无法满足预设精度的问题,结合观测器估计值提出了一种具有预设性能的路径跟踪输出反馈控制器,并根据Lyapunov理论对闭环系统稳定性进行了严格证明。Matlab/Simulink仿真结果表明,所设计的控制策略能保证车辆以预设控制性能跟踪上期望路径,进一步在硬件在环仿真试验台上进行验证,结果表明所设计方案能严格保证横向跟踪偏差位于安全边界之内并具有较强的鲁棒性。     

基于自然驾驶数据的切入场景队列跟驰仿真

车辆切入是常见的驾驶行为，频繁的变道切入行为影响了通行效率与交通安全。因此，揭示切入场景下的驾驶特性对研究交通拥堵和行驶安全机理具有重要意义。在自然驾驶数据的基础上，根据驾驶人的主观风险感知特性，探究驾驶人的切入行为发生条件，并在期望安全裕度（DSM）模型的基础上，标定了切入场景下的相关参数，根据标定结果进行切入场景下的队列跟驰仿真。仿真结果表明:在仿真区间内，队列的长度、行驶速度以及切入车的切入位置不同会影响队列的稳定性以及队列的调整，当队列长度由4辆变为13辆，速度由5 m/s增至20 m/s，切入车的位置由贴近前后车变为前后2辆车中间时，切入行为对队列的稳定性影响变得越小，队列越容易恢复到稳定状态。      

A real-time multi-vehicle simulator for longitudinal controller design

This paper presents a new multi-vehicle simulator for platoon simulation. The main new feature of the developed simulator is a network structure for the real-time simulation of multiple vehicles, each with a detailed powertrain and engine model. It has a small initial delay, which is determined by the number of connected PCs, but the actual simulation is performed and displayed in real-time after this initial and one-time delay. Several longitudinal controllers, including a PID controller with gain scheduling, an adaptive controller, and a fuzzy controller, are also implemented in the simulator. Various system parameters can be modified interactively in the simulator screen, which is very useful for simulating a platoon of heterogeneous vehicles, in which vehicles with different dynamics and different longitudinal controllers may be involved. The simulator provides an excellent tool to develop vehicle longitudinal controllers and to study platoon behaviors. The developed simulator is also effective in testing the effects of nonlinearities neglected in the controller design phase, such as actuator delays and gear shifting schedule.     

A real-time multi-vehicle simulator for longitudinal controller design

This paper presents a new multi-vehicle simulator for platoon simulation. The main new feature of the developed simulator is a network structure for the real-time simulation of multiple vehicles, each with a detailed powertrain and engine model. It has a small initial delay, which is determined by the number of connected PCs, but the actual simulation is performed and displayed in real-time after this initial and one-time delay. Several longitudinal controllers, including a PID controller with gain scheduling, an adaptive controller, and a fuzzy controller, are also implemented in the simulator. Various system parameters can be modified interactively in the simulator screen, which is very useful for simulating a platoon of heterogeneous vehicles, in which vehicles with different dynamics and different longitudinal controllers may be involved. The simulator provides an excellent tool to develop vehicle longitudinal controllers and to study platoon behaviors. The developed simulator is also effective in testing the effects of nonlinearities neglected in the controller design phase, such as actuator delays and gear shifting schedule.     

Vehicle trajectory challenge in predictive active steering rollover prevention

High center of mass vehicles are likely to rollover in extreme maneuvers. Available works present control strategies to prevent rollover. In these works, however, other important parameters such as path trajectory tracking are not a main concern. In this paper conflicts between rollover prevention and trajectory tracking is investigated. Model predictive control (MPC) is adopted to predict and avoid rollover while tracking desired trajectory. For this regard a model based future error estimation is introduced. The control framework predicts both rollover and trajectory error simultaneously. It avoids rollover while tries to track the trajectory. Simulation results for two controllers with and without trajectory tracking are presented. The results indicate that the controllers effectively limit rollover as a hard constraint while the trajectory tracking controller also minimizes and recovers the path error.