Switching Multi-Objective Receding Horizon Control for CACC of Mixed Vehicle Strings

Vehicle safety, ride comfort, formation control and fuel economy are the main control objectives of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) of vehicle strings. This paper considers the multi-objective CACC problem of a mixed vehicle string, i.e., the vehicle string is composed of CACC-, ACC- and human-driven vehicles. A new switching multi-objective receding horizon predictive control method is proposed for CACC of mixed vehicle strings. The longitudinal models of ACC- and human-driven vehicles are used to estimate the driving behaviors of the individual vehicles. Then three multi-objective predictive controllers are separately designed for different vehicle scenarios. According to different preceding vehicles, the multi-objective predictive controllers are switched online in the normal situation, and in the dangerous situation, the predictive controller is switched to the safety controller to ensure driving safety of vehicles in the string. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method, a mixed vehicle string consisting of six cars is used in the simulation experiment with complex traffic scenarios.