Optimal control for decentralized platooning

Abstract: The idea of autonomous vehicles and automated highway systems is no new concept to the automotive industry. The potential benets of such a technology are numerous. The platooning approach would imply energy economy through air drag reduction, but also reduced trac congestion and increased safety. The question of longitudinal control in a platoon conguration is central, the main concern being relative to safety. In this thesis, dierent classical control approaches will be compared and applied to the platooning problem. Among these approaches, one was tested in November 2012 in a demonstration which involved three teams and multiple vehicles from dierent Swedish universities. Constrained optimal control comes with the prospect of increased safety and better handling of some characteristics of physical systems. The main negative impact of this constraint handling lies in its computational complexity. Numerical problems were encountered and described with the use of MPC. Proportional-Integral and Linear Quadratic controllers were retained and applied to the tracking problem in the context of vehicle platooning. These methods will be compared in a simulation environment.