Flocking cooperative driving control of four-wheel independently driving electric autonomous vehicles considering vehicular dynamic processes

摘要

This paper presents a cooperative driving system for multiple autonomous vehicles based on the flocking method. Comparison with other flocking cooperative driving systems, the dynamic characters and driving constraints of vehicle are considered. The proposed control system is divided into three levels. The first level is plan level based on the flocking algorithm and the partially-linear kinematic model of vehicle. In order to involved the driving constraints, two selection functions are built. Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) and linear time varying model predictive control (LVT-MPC) are adopt to construct the higher and lower levels, respectively. The higher and lower level controllers track, respectively, the reference states offered by each upper level and maintain the vehicle stability. Simulations about three four-wheel independently driving (FWID) electric autonomous vehicles driving on two different roads (straight and parabola) are implemented to evaluate the performance of the proposed control system. It is confirmed from the simulation results that the proposed control system can effectively control multiple vehicles to form a vehicular platoon in safely and preserve vehicle lateral stability and handing performance.