Motion Sickness-Oriented Cooperative Control in Mixed Traffic: A Hierarchical MPC Framework With Multi-Objective Optimization

This study addresses the limitations of existing collaborative control systems for mixed traffic environments where connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) coexist with human-driven vehicles (HDVs), which overemphasize functional safety and energy efficiency loops while neglecting comfort. We propose a hierarchical model predictive control (HMPC) framework incorporating occupants’ motion sickness. The upper layer generates globally optimal speed sequences through dynamic prediction of signal phases, while the lower layer adopts a variable-weight MPC optimization method with a composite cost function integrating travel time, delay, and motion sickness indicators. To address varying CAV penetration rates in mixed traffic, heterogeneous vehicle dynamics models are developed, where CAVs and HDVs employ Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) and Intelligent Driver Model (IDM), respectively. The simulation evaluation results demonstrates that the proposed method achieves significant performance enhancements across diverse CAV penetration rates and traffic saturation scenarios: traffic efficiency is improved by 6.30% and 13.94%, while motion comfort is improved by 51.91% and 25.07%. Field evaluation at the Dongfeng-Huayuan Road intersection in Zhengzhou further confirms these findings, showing 28.97% and 37.87% reductions in travel time and delay, together with 57.81% and 18.18% declines in MSDV and RMS-Jerk, thereby confirming the control strategy’s robustness in real-world perturbed environments.