Rolling horizon control framework for driver assistance systems. Part II: Cooperative sensing and cooperative control

This contribution furthers the control framework for driver assistance systems in Part I to cooperative systems, where equipped vehicles can exchange relevant information via vehicle-to-vehicle communication to improve the awareness of the ambient situation (cooperative sensing) and to manoeuvre together under a common goal (cooperative control). To operationalize the cooperative sensing strategy, the framework is applied to the development of a multi-anticipative controller, where an equipped vehicle uses information from its direct predecessor to predict the behaviour of its pre-predecessor. To operationalize the cooperative control strategy, we design cooperative controllers for sequential equipped vehicles in a platoon, where they collaborate to optimise a joint objective. The cooperative control strategy is not restricted to cooperation between equipped vehicles. When followed by a human-driven vehicle, equipped vehicles can still exhibit cooperative behaviour by predicting the behaviour of the human-driven follower, even if the prediction is not perfect. The performance of the proposed controllers are assessed by simulating a platoon of 11 vehicles with reference to the non-cooperative controller proposed in Part I. Evaluations show that the multi-anticipative controller generates smoother behaviour in accelerating phase. By a careful choice of the running cost specification, cooperative controllers lead to smoother decelerating behaviour and more responsive and agile accelerating behaviour compared to the non-cooperative controller. The dynamic characteristics of the proposed controllers provide new insights into the potential impact of cooperative systems on traffic flow operations, particularly at the congestion head and tail. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.