Abstract:

Aiming at the cooperative adaptive cruise control （CACC） problem of nonlinear vehicle platoon with unidirectional communication topology， a distributed model predictive control （DMPC） strategy is proposed in this paper， which ensures the stability of platoon and meets the requirements of vehicle following performance， safety and occupant comfort of each vehicle in the platoon. Firstly， the dynamic model and communication topology structure model of vehicle platoon are established， the cost function and system constraints are designed based on the multiple optimal performance of the platoon system， an open?looped local optimization problem is solved for each following vehicle in the platoon based on the limited information it receives， and the optimal control quantity at the current moment is calculated as the input. This process is repeated constantly to fulfill the goal of rolling optimization， achieving the CACC of the vehicle platoon. Then， the Lyapunov candidate function is constructed by the sum of local cost functions of CACC system， and the sufficient conditions for the asymptotic stability of vehicle platoon system are proved. Finally， a Carsim/Simulink joint simulation is conducted to analyze the control performance of the algorithm for vehicle platoon with different forms of one?way communication topology in ideal state， followed by a real vehicle test to verify the control performance of the algorithm in a real vehicle conditions of the jitter in perception layer and delay and error in the bottom control layer. Simulation and real vehicle test results show that the control strategy proposed can enable the vehicle platoon fulfill its optimized performances with better robustness to external disturbances.

Key words: intelligent vehicles, distributed model predictive control, cooperative adaptive cruise control, multi?objective optimization