Impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles on Energy and Traffic Flow: Optimal Control Design and Verification Through Field Testing

This dissertation assesses eco-driving effectiveness in several key traffic scenarios that include passenger vehicle transportation in highway driving and urban driving that also includes interactions with traffic signals, as well as heavy-duty line-haul truck transportation in highway driving with significant road grade. These studies are accomplished through both traffic microsimulation that propagates individual vehicle interactions to synthesize large-scale traffic patterns that emerge from the eco-driving strategies, and through experimentation in which real prototyped connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are utilized to directly measure energy benefits from the designed eco-driving control strategies. In particular, vehicle-in-the-loop is leveraged for the CAVs driven on a physical test track to interact with surrounding traffic that is virtually realized through said microsimulation software in real time. In doing so, model predictive control is designed and implemented to create performative eco-driving policies and to select vehicle lane, as well as enforce safety constraints while autonomously driving a real vehicle. Ultimately, eco-driving policies are both simulated and experimentally vetted in a variety of typical driving scenarios to show up to a 50% boost in fuel economy when switching to CAV drivers without compromising traffic flow. The first part of this dissertation specifically assesses energy efficiency of connected and automated passenger vehicles that exploit intention-sharing sourced from both neighboring vehicles in a highway scene and from traffic lights in an urban scene. Linear model predictive control is implemented for CAV motion planning, whereby chance constraints are introduced to balance between traffic compactness and safety, and integer decision variables are introduced for lane selection and collision avoidance in multi-lane environments. Validation results are shown from both large-scale microsimulation and through experimentation of real prototyped CAVs. The second part of this dissertation then assesses energy efficiency of automated line-haul trucks when tasked to aerodynamically platoon. Nonlinear model predictive control is implemented for motion planning, and simulation and experimentation are conducted for platooning verification under highway conditions with traffic. Then, interaction-aware and intention-sharing cooperative control is further introduced to eliminate experimentally measured platoon disengagements that occur on real highways when using only status-sharing control. Finally, the performance of automated drivers versus human drivers are compared in a point-to-point scenario to verify fundamental eco-driving impacts -- experimentally showing eco-driving to boost energy economy by 11% on average even in simple driving scenarios

Efficient Automated Driving Strategies Leveraging Anticipation and Optimal Control

Automated vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems bring computation, sensing, and communication technologies that exceed human abilities in some ways. For example, automated vehicles may sense a panorama all at once, do not suffer from human impairments and distractions, and could wirelessly communicate precise data with neighboring vehicles. Prototype and commercial deployments have demonstrated the capability to relieve human operators of some driving tasks up to and including fully autonomous taxi rides in some areas. The ultimate impact of this technology’s large-scale market penetration on energy efficiency remains unclear, with potential negative factors like road use by empty vehicles competing with positive ones like automatic eco-driving. Fundamentally enabled by historic and look-ahead data, this dissertation addresses the use of automated driving and driver assistance to optimize vehicle motion for energy efficiency. Facets of this problem include car following, co-optimized acceleration and lane change planning, and collaborative multi-agent guidance. Optimal control, especially model predictive control, is used extensively to improve energy efficiency while maintaining safe and timely driving via constraints. Techniques including chance constraints and mixed integer programming help overcome uncertainty and non-convexity challenges. Extensions of these techniques to tractor trailers on sloping roads are provided by making use of linear parameter-varying models. To approach the wheel-input energy eco-driving problem over generally shaped sloping roads with the computational potential for closed-loop implementation, a linear programming formulation is constructed. Distributed and collaborative techniques that enable connected and automated vehicles to accommodate their neighbors in traffic are also explored and compared to centralized control. Using simulations and vehicle-in-the-loop car following experiments, the proposed algorithms are benchmarked against others that do not make use of look-ahead information

2022 Vehicle Dynamics seminar

The seminar is held annually. The full title of this year\u27s seminar was "2021 Vehicle Dynamics seminar -- Connected and Electric"

Transportation Mission-Based Optimization of Heavy Combination Road Vehicles and Distributed Propulsion, Including Predictive Energy and Motion Control

This thesis proposes methodologies to improve heavy vehicle design by reducing the total cost of ownership and by increasing energy efficiency and safety.Environmental issues, consumers expectations and the growing demand for freight transport have created a competitive environment in providing better transportation solutions. In this thesis, it is proposed that freight vehicles can be designed in a more cost- and energy-efficient manner if they are customized for narrow ranges of operational domains and transportation use-cases. For this purpose, optimization-based methods were applied to minimize the total cost of ownership and to deliver customized vehicles with tailored propulsion components that best fit the given transportation missions and operational environment. Optimization-based design of the vehicle components was found to be effective due to the simultaneous consideration of the optimization of the transportation mission infrastructure, including charging stations, loading-unloading, routing and fleet composition and size, especially in case of electrified propulsion. Implementing integrated vehicle hardware-transportation optimization could reduce the total cost of ownership by up to 35% in the case of battery electric heavy vehicles. Furthermore, in this thesis, the impacts of two future technological advancements, i.e., heavy vehicle electrification and automation, on road freight transport were discussed. It was shown that automation helps the adoption of battery electric heavy vehicles in freight transport. Moreover, the optimizations and simulations produced a large quantity of data that can help users to select the best vehicle in terms of the size, propulsion system, and driving system for a given transportation assignment. The results of the optimizations revealed that battery electric and hybrid heavy combination vehicles exhibit the lowest total cost of ownership in certain transportation scenarios. In these vehicles, propulsion can be distributed over different axles of different units, thus the front units may be pushed by the rear units. Therefore, online optimal energy management strategies were proposed in this thesis to optimally control the vehicle motion and propulsion in terms of the minimum energy usage and lateral stability. These involved detailed multitrailer vehicle modeling and the design and solution of nonlinear optimal control problems

Real-time Predictive Energy Management of Hybrid Electric Heavy Vehicles by Sequential Programming

With the objective of reducing fuel consumption, this paper presents real-time predictive energy management of hybrid electric heavy vehicles. We propose an optimal control strategy that determines the power split between different vehicle power sources and brakes. Based on the model predictive control (MPC) and sequential programming, the optimal trajectories of the vehicle velocity and battery state of charge are found for upcoming horizons with a length of 5-20 km. Then, acceleration and brake pedal positions together with the battery usage are regulated to follow the requested speed and state of charge that is verified using a vehicle plant model. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a sequential linear program for predictive energy management that is faster and simpler than sequential quadratic programming in tested solvers and gives trajectories that are very close to the best trajectories found by nonlinear programming. The performance of the method is also compared to two different sequential quadratic programs

Design and validation of decision and control systems in automated driving

xxvi, 148 p.En la última década ha surgido una tendencia creciente hacia la automatización de los vehículos, generando un cambio significativo en la movilidad, que afectará profundamente el modo de vida de las personas, la logística de mercancías y otros sectores dependientes del transporte. En el desarrollo de la conducción automatizada en entornos estructurados, la seguridad y el confort, como parte de las nuevas funcionalidades de la conducción, aún no se describen de forma estandarizada. Dado que los métodos de prueba utilizan cada vez más las técnicas de simulación, los desarrollos existentes deben adaptarse a este proceso. Por ejemplo, dado que las tecnologías de seguimiento de trayectorias son habilitadores esenciales, se deben aplicar verificaciones exhaustivas en aplicaciones relacionadas como el control de movimiento del vehículo y la estimación de parámetros. Además, las tecnologías en el vehículo deben ser lo suficientemente robustas para cumplir con los requisitos de seguridad, mejorando la redundancia y respaldar una operación a prueba de fallos. Considerando las premisas mencionadas, esta Tesis Doctoral tiene como objetivo el diseño y la implementación de un marco para lograr Sistemas de Conducción Automatizados (ADS) considerando aspectos cruciales, como la ejecución en tiempo real, la robustez, el rango operativo y el ajuste sencillo de parámetros. Para desarrollar las aportaciones relacionadas con este trabajo, se lleva a cabo un estudio del estado del arte actual en tecnologías de alta automatización de conducción. Luego, se propone un método de dos pasos que aborda la validación de ambos modelos de vehículos de simulación y ADS. Se introducen nuevas formulaciones predictivas basadas en modelos para mejorar la seguridad y el confort en el proceso de seguimiento de trayectorias. Por último, se evalúan escenarios de mal funcionamiento para mejorar la seguridad en entornos urbanos, proponiendo una estrategia alternativa de estimación de posicionamiento para minimizar las condiciones de riesgo

Energy-efficient Reactive and Predictive Connected Cruise Control

In this paper, we propose a framework for the longitudinal control of connected and automated vehicles traveling in mixed traffic consisting of connected and non-connected human-driven vehicles. Reactive and predictive controllers are proposed. Reactive controllers are given by explicit feedback control laws. In predictive controllers, the control input is optimized in a receding-horizon fashion, which depends on the predictions of motions of preceding vehicles. Beyond-line-of-sight information is obtained via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, and is utilized in the proposed reactive and predictive controllers. Simulations utilizing real traffic data are used to show that connectivity can bring significant energy savings.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologie

Design and validation of decision and control systems in automated driving

xxvi, 148 p.En la última década ha surgido una tendencia creciente hacia la automatización de los vehículos, generando un cambio significativo en la movilidad, que afectará profundamente el modo de vida de las personas, la logística de mercancías y otros sectores dependientes del transporte. En el desarrollo de la conducción automatizada en entornos estructurados, la seguridad y el confort, como parte de las nuevas funcionalidades de la conducción, aún no se describen de forma estandarizada. Dado que los métodos de prueba utilizan cada vez más las técnicas de simulación, los desarrollos existentes deben adaptarse a este proceso. Por ejemplo, dado que las tecnologías de seguimiento de trayectorias son habilitadores esenciales, se deben aplicar verificaciones exhaustivas en aplicaciones relacionadas como el control de movimiento del vehículo y la estimación de parámetros. Además, las tecnologías en el vehículo deben ser lo suficientemente robustas para cumplir con los requisitos de seguridad, mejorando la redundancia y respaldar una operación a prueba de fallos. Considerando las premisas mencionadas, esta Tesis Doctoral tiene como objetivo el diseño y la implementación de un marco para lograr Sistemas de Conducción Automatizados (ADS) considerando aspectos cruciales, como la ejecución en tiempo real, la robustez, el rango operativo y el ajuste sencillo de parámetros. Para desarrollar las aportaciones relacionadas con este trabajo, se lleva a cabo un estudio del estado del arte actual en tecnologías de alta automatización de conducción. Luego, se propone un método de dos pasos que aborda la validación de ambos modelos de vehículos de simulación y ADS. Se introducen nuevas formulaciones predictivas basadas en modelos para mejorar la seguridad y el confort en el proceso de seguimiento de trayectorias. Por último, se evalúan escenarios de mal funcionamiento para mejorar la seguridad en entornos urbanos, proponiendo una estrategia alternativa de estimación de posicionamiento para minimizar las condiciones de riesgo