Serret-Frenet frame based on path following control for underactuated unmanned surface vehicles with dynamic uncertainties

The path following problem for an underactuated unmanned surface vehicle(USV) in the Serret-Frenet frame is addressed. The control system takes account of the uncertain influence induced by model perturbation, external disturbance, etc. By introducing the Serret-Frenet frame and global coordinate transformation, the control problem of underactuated system(a nonlinear system with single-input and ternate-output) is transformed into the control problem of actuated system(a single-input and single-output nonlinear system), which simplifies the controller design. A backstepping adaptive sliding mode controller(BADSMC)is proposed based on backstepping design technique, adaptive method and theory of dynamic slide model control(DSMC). Then, it is proven that the state of closed loop system is globally stabilized to the desired configuration with the proposed controller. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Modeling electric vehicle's following behavior and numerical tests

The micro modeling for electric vehicle and its solution were investigated. A new car-following model for electric vehicle was proposed based on the existing car-following models. The impacts of the electric vehicle's charging electricity were studied from the numerical perspective. The numerical results show that the electric vehicle's charging electricity will destroy the stability of uniform flow and produce some prominent queues and these traffic phenomena are directly related to the initial headway, the distance between two adjacent charging stations and the number of charging stations. The above results can help traffic engineer to choose the position of charging station and the electric vehicle's driver to adjust his/her driving behavior in the traffic system with charging station.

Establishment, maintenance, and re-establishment of the safe and efficient steady-following state

We present an integrated mathematical model of vehicle-following control for the establishment, maintenance, and re-establishment of the previous or new safe and efficient steady-following state. The hyperbolic functions are introduced to establish the corresponding mathematical models, which can describe the behavioral adjustment of the following vehicle steered by a well-experienced driver under complex vehicle following situations. According to the proposed mathematical models, the control laws of the following vehicle adjusting its own behavior can be calculated for its moving in safety,efficiency, and smoothness(comfort). Simulation results show that the safe and efficient steady-following state can be well established, maintained, and re-established by its own smooth(comfortable) behavioral adjustment with the synchronous control of the following vehicle’s velocity, acceleration, and the actual following distance.

On String Stable Control of Platoon of Automated Vehicles with Predecessor-successor Information Framework

For the constant distance spacing policy,the existing researches of the string stability focus on the single-predecessor information framework（SPIF） and predecessor-successor information framework（PSIF）.The research results demonstrated that the string stability could not be guaranteed with the SPIF,and then the PSIF was proposed to resolve this string instability.But the issue,whether the string stability can be guaranteed when applying the PSIF,is still controversial.Meanwhile,most of the previous researches on the string stability were conducted without consideration of the parasitic time delays and lags.In this paper,the practical longitudinal vehicle dynamics model is built with consideration of the parasitic time delays and lags existing in the actuators,sensors or the communication systems.Secondly,the detailed theoretical analysis of string stability in frequency domain is conducted to demonstrate that the classical linear control laws can not ensure the string stability when applying both the symmetrical PSIF（SPSIF） and asymmetrical PSIF（APSIF）.Thirdly,a control law,which adds the position and velocity information of the leading vehicle,is proposed to guarantee string stability for small/medium platoon,and the other control law,which adds the acceleration information of the controlled vehicle,is proposed to guarantee string stability for large platoon as well as small/medium platoon.Finally,the comparative simulation is conducted to confirm the conducted analysis and the proposed control laws.The conducted research completes the means to analyze the string stability in frequency domain,provides the parameters＇ reference for the design and implementation of the practical automatic following controllers,and improves the reliability and stability of the platoon of automatic vehicles.

Modelling of vehicle interaction behavior during discretionary lane-changing preparation process on freeway

In order to increase the accuracy of microscopic traffic flow simulation,two acceleration models are presented to simulate car-following behaviors of the lane-changing vehicle and following putative vehicle during the discretionary lanechanging preparation( DLCP) process, respectively. The proposed acceleration models can reflect vehicle interaction characteristics. Samples used for describing the starting point and the ending point of DLCP are extracted from a real NGSIM vehicle trajectory data set. The acceleration model for a lanechanging vehicle is supposed to be a linear acceleration model.The acceleration model for the following putative vehicle is constructed by referring to the optimal velocity model,in which optimal velocity is defined as a linear function of the velocity of putative leading vehicle. Similar calibration,a hypothesis test and parameter sensitivity analysis were conducted on the acceleration model of the lane-changing vehicle and following putative vehicle,respectively. The validation results of the two proposed models suggest that the training and testing errors are acceptable compared with similar works on calibrations for car following models. The parameter sensitivity analysis shows that the subtle observed error does not lead to severe variations of car-following behaviors of the lane-changing vehicle and following putative vehicle.