Event-Triggered Control for Vehicle Platooning

Abstract

This thesis covers the implementation of Event-Triggering Control (ETC) on Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC). CACC has the potential to increase road capacity, by having safe vehicle following with small intervehicle distance (less than 1 second), to increase traffic flow by eliminating shockwave effects, such that string-stable behavior is achieved, and it increases vehicle safety and driving comfort. CACC uses Vehicle-To-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle-To-Infrastructure (V2I) communication. However, excessive use of this wireless communication may result in reliability issues of the communication network. By means of Event-Triggered Control, this issue can be tackled by establishing communication only when it is necessary, while guaranteeing desired closed-loop performance. In this thesis, an event-triggered controller for heterogeneous vehicle platooning is designed, which is decentralized, guarantees vehicle-following with small intervehicle distances, is robust against time-varying delays, and guarantees a positive minimum inter-event time. The algorithm is backed up by simulations, and it shows that communication is significantly reduced while maintaining desired closed-loop performance, when compared to periodic communication.