Eco-Driving of General Mixed Platoons With CAVs and HDVs

Abstract

Eco-driving has been widely investigated over the last decade, but most studies focused on an individual vehicle or a vehicle platoon consisting of pure connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Recently, mixed vehicle platoons consisting of both CAVs and human-driven vehicles (HDVs) have attracted much interest, considering the fact that HDVs will mix with CAVs in the traffic system for a long period. This paper proposes an eco-driving strategy for mixed platoons, composing of both offline planning and online tracking. In offline planning, an energy-efficient speed reference and a gearshift reference are determined by using the characteristics of each vehicle and future traffic information through dynamic programming. Offline planning optimised the vehicle speed and gearshift to allow the vehicle powertrain working at a high efficiency region. In online tracking, two different types of model predictive controls (MPCs) are proposed to control the CAVs in real-time. The MPCs are designed to achieve precise speed reference tracking performance and guarantee platoon string stability, respectively. Meanwhile, HDVs within the mixed platoon can be located anywhere in the platoon except working as the first vehicle to improve flexibility. Therefore, the proposed eco-driving strategy is applicable to mixed platoons with more general structures in ordering. The key contribution of this study is that the proposed eco-driving strategy can optimise the total fuel consumption for general mixed platoons. Simulation results show that the proposed ecodriving strategy improves the fuel economy of a mixed platoon by up to 6.39% compared to the benchmark conventional-adaptive cruise control strategies.

Safe and robust data‐driven cooperative control policy for mixed vehicle platoons

“…The HV parameters are h s = 5 m, h g = 50 m, v max = 40 m/s, τ = 0.7 s, α = 0.2, and β = 0.4. The initial vehicle state (p i , v i , a i ), i ∈ [1,3], are randomly set as: (45, 20, 0), (20,15,0) and (0, 20, 0), respectively. The sampling time, number of data samples, desired inter-vehicular distance and velocity profile are the same as Case 1.…”

“…Vehicle platoon refers to a convoy of vehicles that travel at the same (longitudinal) velocity whilst maintaining a desired inter-vehicular distance. Previous studies [1]- [3] revealed that vehicle platoons have a great potential in reducing traffic congestion, accidents and fuel consumption. An effective control strategy is the key to establish vehicle platoons and has attracted much research attention.…”

Eco-Speed Harmonization with Partially Connected and Automated Traffic at an Isolated Intersection

“…Each platoon is required to be led by a CAV. All CAVs must be positioned ahead of each HV within the platoon [27]. However, under low MPR, platoon formation is not always achievable.…”