A homogenization-planning-tracking method to solve cooperative autonomous motion control for heterogeneous carrier dispatch systems

Taxiing aircraft and towed aircraft with drawbar are two typical dispatch modes on the flight deck of aircraft carriers. In this paper, a novel hierarchical solution strategy, named as the Homogenization-Planning-Tracking(HPT) method, to solve cooperative autonomous motion control for heterogeneous carrier dispatch systems is developed. In the homogenization layer, any towed aircraft system involved in the sortie task is abstracted into a virtual taxiing aircraft. This layer transforms the heterogeneous systems into a homogeneous configuration. Then in the planning layer, a centralized optimal control problem is formulated for the homogeneous system. Compared with conducting the path planning directly with the original heterogeneous system, the homogenization layer contributes to reduce the dimension and nonlinearity of the formulated optimal control problem in the planning layer and consequently improves the robustness and efficiency of the solution process. Finally, in the tracking layer, a receding horizon controller is developed to track the reference trajectory obtained in the planning layer. To improve the tracking performance,multi-objective optimization techniques are implemented offline in advance to determine optimal weight parameters used in the tracking layer. Simulations demonstrate that smooth and collision-free cooperative trajectory can be generated efficiently in the planning phase. And robust trajectory tracking can be realized in the presence of external disturbances in the tracking phase.The developed HPT method provides a promising solution to the autonomous deck dispatch for unmanned carrier aircraft in the future.

Cooperative Lane-Change Maneuver for Multiple Automated Vehicles on a Highway

With the development of vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V)communication,it is possible to share information among multiple vehicles.However,the existing research on automated lane changes concentrates only on the single-vehicle lane change with self-detective information.Cooperative lane changes are still a new area with more complicated scenarios and can improve safety and lane-change efficiency.Therefore,a multi-vehicle cooperative automated lane-change maneuver based on V2V communication for scenarios of eight vehicles on three lanes was proposed.In these scenarios,same-direction and intersectant-direction cooperative lane changes were defined.The vehicle that made the cooperative decision obtained the information of surrounding vehicles that were used to cooperatively plan the trajectories,which was called cooperative trajectory planning.The cooperative safety spacing model was proposed to guarantee and improve the safety of all vehicles,and it essentially developed constraints for the trajectory-planning task.Trajectory planning was treated as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing safety,comfort,and lane-change efficiency under the constraints of vehicle dynamics and the aforementioned safety spacing model.Trajectory tracking based on a model predictive control method was designed to minimize tracking errors and control increments.Finally,to verify the validity of the proposed maneuver,an integrated simulation platform combining MATLAB/Simulink with CarSim was established.Moreover,a hardware-in-the-loop test bench was performed for further verification.The results indicated that the proposed multi-vehicle cooperative automated lane-change maneuver can achieve lane changes of multiple vehicles and increase lane-change efficiency while guaranteeing safety and comfort.