Integrated Adaptive Cruise Control with Weight Coefficient Self-Tuning Strategy

This paper presents a novel multi-objective coordinated adaptive cruise control (ACC) algorithm based on a model predictive control (MPC) framework which can comprehensively address issues regarding longitudinal car-following performance, lateral stability, as well as vehicle safety. During the car-following, vehicle dynamics, illustrating the forces acting on the tire contact patches, are established. To simplify the tightly coupled dynamics system, a state-feedback based disturbance decoupling method is employed, by which longitudinal and lateral dynamics can be completely decoupled. Furthermore, the traditional MPC control with a constant weight matrix will probably not be able to solve time-varying multi-objective coordinated optimization issues, especially in transient scenarios. A weight coefficient self-tuning strategy is therefore suggested by which the weight coefficient for each sub-objective can be adjusted automatically with the change of traffic scenarios, accordingly improving the overall car-following performance. The simulations show that the control algorithm utilizing the suggested self-tuning strategy reaps significant benefits in terms of longitudinal car-following performance, while at the same time maintaining a small lateral stability error range.