Evaluation and Implementation of a Longitudinal Control in a Platoon of Radio Controlled Vehicles

Abstract: Over the past decades, congestion and emission problems has increased remarkablywhich escalates the demands on vehicles. The advancements withinthe eld of information and communication systems gives the opportunity todeal with the aforementioned problems. The concept of platooning shows tobe an attractive way of reducing both congestion and emissions by having ashort inter-vehicle spacing. The ndings in studies show that fuel reductionpotentials of 5-20 % are viable as a result of the lowered air drag by drivingin platoon. This thesis investigates the state of the art within the areaof intelligent transport systems (ITS) along with advanced driver assistancesystems (ADAS). Furthermore, the prosecuted work results in a proposedcontrol design for a longitudinal control in a platoon of vehicles. The platoonconsists of two homogeneous radio controlled vehicles (RCV) which aremodelled by taking advantage of system identication methods. The identi-ed plant models are implemented into a Simulink model where the controlsystem is developed. Moreover, the developed control system is implementedinto a real-time demonstrator for experimental evaluation. The results showsthat the modelled dynamics corresponds reasonably well with the real dynamicsof the system. The developed control system proves to work well andagree with the expectations of its performance obtained from simulations.The performance of the proposed controller has been evaluated by means ofsimulations and real experiments. The resulting control system consists ofPID controllers for both speed and spacing control.