Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control Research Articles

Distributed MPC for Multi-Vehicle Cooperative Control Considering the Surrounding Vehicle Personality

In real traffic environment, a single control mode of traditional autonomous vehicles cannot meet various driving requirements for different drivers, which will decrease the acceptance of autonomous vehicles, and even may further cause traffic risks. This paper studies the cooperative strategies between ego vehicle and surrounding vehicles with the naturalistic experiment data, and then designs an autonomous vehicle control method based on the distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC) in order to consider the interaction relationship of ego vehicles and surrounding vehicles. Finally, the proposed method is verified by software simulation and Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulation experiments, and the experiment results demonstrate that the control method proposed in this paper not only can control the vehicle to complete the typical driving tasks smoothly, in terms of car-following and lane-changing, but also can reflect the different cooperative strategies among different driving behavior characteristics, which can improve safety and acceptance of autonomous vehicles to promote the practical application of autonomous vehicle technology.

A Review of Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control System in Intelligent Transportation

Review A Review of Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control System in Intelligent Transportation Songtao Xie 1, Zhenhong Li 1, Farshad Arvin 2, and Zhengtao Ding 1,* 1 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK 2 Swarm & Computational Intelligence Laboratory (SwaCIL), Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK * Correspondence: zhengtao.ding@manchester.ac.uk Received: 25 April 2023 Accepted: 19 September 2023 Published: 25 September 2023 Abstract: Multi-vehicle cooperative control (MVCC) system has the potential to improve traffic flow, reduce congestion, and increase safety. This paper reviews the progress achieved by researchers worldwide regarding different aspects of MVCC systems. Research works of MVCC system architectures and strategies are reviewed, which explain how this system works. Several control methodologies utilized in the MVCC system and their related issues are discussed and compared, and research achievements about string stability and system degradation caused by unreliable communication are also reviewed. Applications of the MVCC system are demonstrated with detailed literature, which draws an overall landscape of the MVCC system and points out current opportunities and challenges. Finally, future research directions for the MVCC system are proposed based on the latest social and technological developments.

Switching cluster synchronization control of networked harmonic oscillators subject to denial-of-service attacks

This paper is concerned with the average cluster synchronization control problem of networked harmonic oscillators under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Different from some existing DoS attack models that often necessitate specific statistical characteristics, only the worse-case duration bound of the DoS attacks is required during the control design procedure, which represents the least a priori knowledge of realistic DoS attacks. Then, a novel switching cluster synchronization control scheme, which leverages a position-based feedback control protocol under a non-small delay and a position velocity-based feedback control protocol with a small delay, is developed such that the above two control protocols are selected based on the occurrence of the DoS attacks. Via formulating the resultant synchronization system as a switched time-delay system, a complete-type Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) method is further proposed to establish sufficient controller design criteria associated with the duration and frequency of attacks for both synchronous and asynchronous DoS attacks among clusters. Furthermore, an iterative algorithm is designed to calculate the control gain matrices by solving a set of nonlinear matrix inequalities (NLMIs). Finally, a multi-vehicle cooperative control system is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed control scheme.

Path Planning and Cooperative Control for Automated Vehicle Platoon Using Hybrid Automata

Cooperative driving systems may increase the utilization of road infrastructure resources through coordinated control and platooning of individual vehicles with the potential of enhancing both traffic safety and efficiency. Vehicle cooperative driving is essentially a hybrid system that is a combination of discrete events, i.e., the transition of discrete cooperative maneuvering modes, such as vehicle merging and platoon splitting, as well as continuous vehicle dynamics. In this paper, a novel hybrid system consisting of the discrete cooperative maneuver switch and the continuous vehicle motion control is introduced into a multi-vehicle cooperative control system with a distributed control structure, leading each automated vehicle to conduct path planning and motion control separately. The primary novelty of this paper lies in that it presents a control algorithm combining artificial potential field (APF) approach with model predictive control (MPC), and using the optimizer of the MPC controller to replace the gradient-descending method in the traditional APF approach. Such a method can accomplish both path planning and motion control synchronously. Second, based on hybrid automata, a cooperative maneuver switching model consisting of a system state set and a discrete maneuver transition rule is established for two discrete maneuvers in the cooperative driving system, i.e., single-vehicle cruising and multiple-vehicle platooning. Simulations in several typical traffic scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control for Load Transportation

Abstract This work proposes a cooperative control solution to the problem of transporting a suspended load using multiple quadrotor vehicles. The problem is addressed for two quadrotors, with a methodology that can be generalized for any number of quadrotors. A dynamic model of the system is developed considering a point-mass load, rigid massless cables, and neglecting aerodynamic effects of the cables. The concept of differential flatness is explored and a new set of flat outputs, which can be used to fully characterize the state of the system, is proposed. A nonlinear Lyapunov-based controller in cascaded form is derived, by defining adequate mappings between the cable tension vectors and the quadrotor thrust vectors and exploring the analogy with the problem of controlling a single quadrotor. Simulation results are presented for tracking of load trajectories. Comparisons are made with a free-flying quadrotor control scheme to highlight the enhanced performance of the proposed scheme.

The Implementation of Consensus Algorithm on a Group of Humanoid Robots with Varying Network Topologies

The purpose of this paper is to present experiment results on the implementation of consensus algorithm on a group of humanoid robots. The experiment in this work is based on some previous works on distributed control of robotic networks and distributed consensus in multi-vehicle cooperative control. According to Ren, a consensus may occur if communication topology between the robots forms a spanning tree. The existence of some shared informations is a necessary condition for this algorithm. Further, a consensus may occur if the topology of communication among the robots forms a spanning tree. However, to apply the algorithm on a group of humanoid robots we need some modification on the original algorithm. A new algorithm is proposed by adding a new damping variable (β) on original algorithm to make a group of humanoid robots move synchronously. The experiment of the new consensus algorithm is tested on two topologies, which are leader-follower and leaderless topology. This research concludes that consensus in a group of humanoid robot can be achieved by inducing damping variable in original equation.

Decentralised formation control and stability analysis for multi-vehicle cooperative manoeuvre

Multi-vehicle cooperative formation control problem is an important and typical topic of research on multi-agent system. This paper presents a formation stability conjecture to conceive a new methodology for solving the decentralised multi-vehicle formation control problem. It employs the “extension-decomposition-aggregation” scheme to transform the complex multi-agent control problem into a group of sub-problems which is able to be solved conveniently. Based on this methodology, it is proved that if all the individual augmented subsystems can be stabilised by using any approach, the overall formation system is not only asymptotically but also exponentially stable in the sense of Lyapunov within a neighbourhood of the desired formation. Simulation study on 6-DOF aerial vehicles (Aerosonde UAVs) has been performed to verify the achieved formation stability result. The proposed multi-vehicle formation control strategy can be conveniently extended to other cooperative control problems of multi-agent systems.

Time-Critical Cooperative Path Following of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles over Time-Varying Networks

This paper addresses the problem of steering a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles along desired three-dimensional paths while meeting stringent spatial and temporal constraints. A representative example is the challenging mission scenario where the unmanned aerial vehicles are tasked to cooperatively execute collision-free maneuvers and arrive at their final destinations at the same time. In the proposed framework, the unmanned aerial vehicles are assigned nominal spatial paths and speed profiles along those, and then the vehicles are requested to execute cooperative path following, rather than open loop trajectory tracking maneuvers. This strategy yields robust behavior against external disturbances by allowing the unmanned aerial vehicles to negotiate their speeds along the paths in response to information exchanged over the supporting communications network. The paper considers the case where the graph that captures the underlying time-varying communications topology is disconnected during some interval of time or even fails to be connected at all times. Conditions are given under which the cooperative path-following closed-loop system is stable. Flight test results of a coordinated road-search mission demonstrate the efficacy of the multi-vehicle cooperative control framework developed in the paper.

Distributed Consensus in Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control: Theory and Applications (Ren, W. and Beard, R.W.; 2008) [Book Shelf

The book is a research monograph that incorporates the authors' main work in multivehicle cooperative control using distributed consensus algorithms. The book involves both theoretical analysis and engineering applications in distributed coordination of multiple ground robots, spacecraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The book gives a systematic analysis of distributed consensus problems of multivehicle cooperative control and summarizes the main recent work of the authors. It is well written, and all of the main theoretical results are given together with rigorous mathematical proofs. This book can be a very useful reference for Ph.D. students and researchers in automatic control.

Experimental Validation of Consensus Algorithms for Multivehicle Cooperative Control

In this brief, consensus algorithms are experimentally implemented and validated on a mobile actuator and sensor network platform under directed, possibly switching interaction topologies to explore issues and challenges in distributed multivehicle cooperative control. Distributed consensus algorithms are applied to two target applications including rendezvous and axial alignment. In the rendezvous application, multiple mobile robots simultaneously arrive at a common a priori unknown target location determined through team negotiation. In the axial alignment application, multiple mobile robots collectively align their final positions along a line. The experimental results show the effectiveness and robustness of the consensus algorithms even in the presence of platform physical limitations, packet loss, information delay, etc. These experimental results validate the corresponding theoretical results.

Information consensus in multivehicle cooperative control

The purpose of this article is to provide a tutorial overview of information consensus in multivehicle cooperative control. Theoretical results regarding consensus-seeking under both time invariant and dynamically changing communication topologies are summarized. Several specific applications of consensus algorithms to multivehicle coordination are described

A decomposition approach to multi-vehicle cooperative control

We use a decomposition approach to generate cooperative strategies for a class of multi-vehicle control problems. By introducing a set of tasks to be completed by the team of vehicles and a task execution method for each vehicle, we decompose the problem into a combinatorial component and a continuous component. The continuous component of the problem is captured by task execution, and the combinatorial component is captured by task assignment. In this paper, we present a solver for task assignment that generates near-optimal assignments quickly and can be used in real-time applications. To motivate our methods, we apply them to an adversarial game between two teams of vehicles. One team is governed by simple rules and the other by our algorithms. In our study of this game we found phase transitions, showing that the task assignment problem is most difficult to solve when the capabilities of the adversaries are comparable. Finally, we utilize our algorithms in a hierarchical model predictive control architecture with a variable replanning rate at each level to provide feedback in dynamically changing and uncertain environments.

High-Order and Model Reference Consensus Algorithms in Cooperative Control of MultiVehicle Systems

In this paper we study ℓth-order (ℓ⩾3) consensus algorithms, which generalize the existing first-order and second-order consensus algorithms in the literature. We show necessary and sufficient conditions under which each information variable and its higher-order derivatives converge to common values. We also present the idea of higher-order consensus with a leader and introduce the concept of an ℓth-order model-reference consensus problem, where each information variable and its high-order derivatives not only reach consensus, but also converge to the solution of a prescribed dynamic model. The effectiveness of these algorithms is demonstrated through simulations and a multivehicle cooperative control application, which mimics a flocking behavior in birds.

Special issue on multi-vehicle systems cooperative control with application

Special issue on multi-vehicle systems cooperative control with application