Optimal Distributed Controller Synthesis for Chain Structures: Applications to Vehicle Formations

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal distributed control method for chain-structured interconnected systems, such as vehicle platoons, improving performance and energy efficiency under communication constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a decomposition approach for optimal controller synthesis in chain systems and demonstrates its effectiveness in vehicle platooning scenarios.

Findings

Performance close to centralized controllers

Adding communication links improves control quality

Significant reduction in control input energy

Abstract

We consider optimal distributed controller synthesis for an interconnected system subject to communication constraints, in linear quadratic settings. Motivated by the problem of finite heavy duty vehicle platooning, we study systems composed of interconnected subsystems over a chain graph. By decomposing the system into orthogonal modes, the cost function can be separated into individual components. Thereby, derivation of the optimal controllers in state-space follows immediately. The optimal controllers are evaluated under the practical setting of heavy duty vehicle platooning with communication constraints. It is shown that the performance can be significantly improved by adding a few communication links. The results show that the proposed optimal distributed controller performs almost as well as the centralized linear quadratic Gaussian controller and outperforms a suboptimal controller in terms of control input. Furthermore, the control input energy can be reduced significantly with the proposed controller compared to the suboptimal controller, depending on the vehicle position in the platoon. Thus, the importance of considering preceding vehicles as well as the following vehicles in a platoon for fuel optimality is concluded.