Eco-driving Trajectory Planning of a Heterogeneous Platoon in Urban Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces an eco-driving trajectory planning method for heterogeneous electric vehicle platoons in urban environments, optimizing energy use, mobility, and comfort while enabling intersection crossing without stops.

Contribution

It proposes a novel control strategy combining dynamic programming and cooperative adaptive cruise control for heterogeneous EV platoons in urban settings.

Findings

Energy consumption reduced in simulations

Platoon maintains mobility and passenger comfort

Vehicles can pass intersections without stopping

Abstract

Given the increasing popularity and demand for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), Eco-driving and platooning in highways and urban areas to increase the efficiency of the traffic system is becoming a possibility. This paper presents Eco-driving trajectory planning for a platoon of heterogeneous electric vehicles (EVs) in urban environments. The proposed control strategy for the platoon considers energy consumption, mobility and passenger comfort, with which vehicles may pass signalized intersections with no stops. For a given urban route, first, the platoon's leader vehicle employs dynamic programming (DP) to plan a trajectory for the anticipated path with the aim of balancing energy consumption, mobility and passenger comfort. Then, every other following CAV in the platoon either follows its preceding vehicle using a PID-based cooperative adaptive cruise control or plans its own trajectory by checking whether it can pass the next intersection without stopping. Furthermore, a heavy-duty vehicle that cannot efficiently follow a light-weight vehicle would instead employ the DP-based trajectory planner. Simulation studies demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control strategy with which the platoon's energy consumption is shown to reduce while the mobility is not compromised.