Decentralized Merging Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles to Enhance Safety and Energy Efficiency using Control Barrier Functions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized control method for connected vehicles merging on highways, using control barrier functions to improve safety, energy efficiency, and traffic flow without explicit vehicle ordering or gridlock issues.

Contribution

It proposes a novel decentralized CBF-based merging control algorithm that ensures safe, energy-efficient maneuvers without vehicle priority or explicit ordering.

Findings

Significant energy efficiency improvements over FIFO methods

Enhanced robustness compared to centralized control

No gridlock occurrences in simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a decentralized Control Barrier Function (CBF) based approach for highway merging of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). In this control algorithm, each "host" vehicle negotiates with other agents in a control zone of the highway network, and enacts its own action, to perform safe and energy-efficient merge maneuvers. It uses predictor-corrector loops within the robust CBF setting for negotiation and to reconcile disagreements that may arise. There is no explicit order of vehicles and no priority. A notable feature is absence of gridlocks due to instability of the inter-agent system. Results from Monte Carlo simulations show significant improvement in the system-wide energy efficiency and traffic flow compared to a first-in-first-out approach, as well as enhanced robustness of the proposed decentralized controller compared to its centralized counterpart.