Model predictive control of a vehicle platoon

The objective of this paper is to develop a model predictive control (MPC) approach to control the inter vehicular distance and the speed in a vehicle platoon in order to improve road safety and to minimize fuel consumption. It is assumed to have a multicast topology communication system among vehicles. The dynamic model of each single car considers the tractive force, its aerodynamic, and the rolling resistance of the vehicles. The control law is dedicated to manage the longitudinal spacing of the platoon according to leader's behavior. The objective is to minimize the tractive force to be applied to each vehicle in order to maintain a constant distance among vehicles according to position and speed reference values. The non-linear cinematic model has been linearized around its previous state value. The centralized controller regulates vehicle accelerations or decelerations over a time horizon. The objective is to optimize the cost function, which minimizes the square deviations of positions, speeds, and tractive forces, as well as the predefined inter vehicular distances in the platoon. The control model has been tested in two case studies that impose, respectively, constant and time varying speed reference values. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach with special relevance to the constant speed case.