A platoon-based cooperative optimal control for connected autonomous vehicles at highway on-ramps under heavy traffic

To improve traffic efficiency at highway on-ramps under heavy traffic, this study proposes a platoon-based cooperative optimal control algorithm for connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs). The proposed algorithm classifies CAVs on both mainline and on-ramp into multiple local platoons (LPs) according to their initial conditions (i.e., spacing and speed), which enables the algorithm to adapt to time-varying traffic volume. A distributed cooperative control for multiple LPs is designed which projects on-ramp LPs onto mainline to transform the complex 2-D multi-platoon cooperation problem into a 1-D platoon following control problem. An optimal control is applied to further consider the strict nonlinear safety spacing constraint and state limitations (e.g., maximum speed and acceleration), and an analytical solution to the optimal control is derived based on Pontryagin’s maximum principle. The consensus of intra-platoon and inter-platoon are analyzed, and sufficient conditions of the consensus are mathematically deducted based on Lyapunov stability theorem. Numerical simulations are conducted for different traffic demand levels and demand splits to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The sensitivity analysis of maximum platoon sizes for mainline and on-ramp LPs is performed. A comparison with a baseline virtual platooning merging strategy is conducted, and results show that the proposed algorithm could significantly improve the average travel speed and traffic efficiency, and reduce total travel time.