6,090 research outputs found
Robust Distributed Control Protocols for Large Vehicular Platoons with Prescribed Transient and Steady State Performance
In this paper, we study the longitudinal control problem for a platoon of
vehicles with unknown nonlinear dynamics under both the predecessor-following
and the bidirectional control architectures. The proposed control protocols are
fully distributed in the sense that each vehicle utilizes feedback from its
relative position with respect to its preceding and following vehicles as well
as its own velocity, which can all be easily obtained by onboard sensors.
Moreover, no previous knowledge of model nonlinearities/disturbances is
incorporated in the control design, enhancing in that way the robustness of the
overall closed loop system against model imperfections. Additionally, certain
designer-specified performance functions determine the transient and
steady-state response, thus preventing connectivity breaks due to sensor
limitations as well as inter-vehicular collisions. Finally, extensive
simulation studies and a real-time experiment conducted with mobile robots
clarify the proposed control protocols and verify their effectiveness.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, accepte
Cooperative look-ahead control for fuel-efficient and safe heavy-duty vehicle platooning
The operation of groups of heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) at a small
inter-vehicular distance (known as platoon) allows to lower the overall
aerodynamic drag and, therefore, to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas
emissions. However, due to the large mass and limited engine power of HDVs,
slopes have a significant impact on the feasible and optimal speed profiles
that each vehicle can and should follow. Therefore maintaining a short
inter-vehicular distance as required by platooning without coordination between
vehicles can often result in inefficient or even unfeasible trajectories. In
this paper we propose a two-layer control architecture for HDV platooning aimed
to safely and fuel-efficiently coordinate the vehicles in the platoon. Here,
the layers are responsible for the inclusion of preview information on road
topography and the real-time control of the vehicles, respectively. Within this
architecture, dynamic programming is used to compute the fuel-optimal speed
profile for the entire platoon and a distributed model predictive control
framework is developed for the real-time control of the vehicles. The
effectiveness of the proposed controller is analyzed by means of simulations of
several realistic scenarios that suggest a possible fuel saving of up to 12%
for the follower vehicles compared to the use of standard platoon controllers.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, submitted to journa
Transients of platoons with asymmetric and different Laplacians
We consider an asymmetric control of platoons of identical vehicles with
nearest-neighbor interaction. Recent results show that if the vehicle uses
different asymmetries for position and velocity errors, the platoon has a short
transient and low overshoots. In this paper we investigate the properties of
vehicles with friction. To achieve consensus, an integral part is added to the
controller, making the vehicle a third-order system. We show that the
parameters can be chosen so that the platoon behaves as a wave equation with
different wave velocities. Simulations suggest that our system has a better
performance than other nearest-neighbor scenarios. Moreover, an
optimization-based procedure is used to find the controller properties
Optimal Distributed Controller Design with Communication Delays: Application to Vehicle Formations
This paper develops a controller synthesis algorithm for distributed LQG
control problems under output feedback. We consider a system consisting of
three interconnected linear subsystems with a delayed information sharing
structure. While the state-feedback case of this problem has previously been
solved, the extension to output-feedback is nontrivial, as the classical
separation principle fails. To find the optimal solution, the controller is
decomposed into two independent components. One is delayed centralized LQR, and
the other is the sum of correction terms based on additional local information.
Explicit discrete-time equations are derived whose solutions are the gains of
the optimal controller.Comment: Submitted to the 51nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 201
Constraining Attacker Capabilities Through Actuator Saturation
For LTI control systems, we provide mathematical tools - in terms of Linear
Matrix Inequalities - for computing outer ellipsoidal bounds on the reachable
sets that attacks can induce in the system when they are subject to the
physical limits of the actuators. Next, for a given set of dangerous states,
states that (if reached) compromise the integrity or safe operation of the
system, we provide tools for designing new artificial limits on the actuators
(smaller than their physical bounds) such that the new ellipsoidal bounds (and
thus the new reachable sets) are as large as possible (in terms of volume)
while guaranteeing that the dangerous states are not reachable. This guarantees
that the new bounds cut as little as possible from the original reachable set
to minimize the loss of system performance. Computer simulations using a
platoon of vehicles are presented to illustrate the performance of our tools
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