Sequential Cooperative Energy and Time-Optimal Lane Change Maneuvers for Highway Traffic

TL;DR

This paper develops optimal control strategies for cooperative lane change maneuvers in highway traffic, aiming to minimize traffic disruption and improve throughput while ensuring safety, with proven analytical solutions and simulation validation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cooperative control framework that optimizes lane change maneuvers considering traffic flow impact, extending previous work by including traffic disruption metrics and multiple sequential maneuvers.

Findings

Analytical solutions guarantee safety constraints.

Up to 35% throughput improvement with cooperation.

Time relaxation method balances maneuver time and disruption.

Abstract

We derive optimal control policies for a Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) and cooperating neighboring CAVs to carry out a lane change maneuver consisting of a longitudinal phase where the CAV properly positions itself relative to the cooperating neighbors and a lateral phase where it safely changes lanes. In contrast to prior work on this problem, where the CAV "selfishly" seeks to minimize its maneuver time, we seek to ensure that the fast-lane traffic flow is minimally disrupted (through a properly defined metric) and that highway throughput is improved by optimally selecting the cooperating vehicles. We show that analytical solutions for the optimal trajectories can be derived and are guaranteed to satisfy safety constraints for all vehicles involved in the maneuver. When feasible solutions do not exist, we include a time relaxation method trading off a longer maneuver time with reduced disruption. Our analysis is also extended to multiple sequential maneuvers. Simulation results where the controllers are implemented show their effectiveness in terms of safety guarantees and up to 35% throughput improvement compared to maneuvers with no vehicle cooperation.