Nonlinear MPC for Emission Efficient Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

Advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) are primarily introduced to increase safety in every day trafic situations. Adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems represent an important example for such ADAS. The worldwide increasing trafic volume and the demand for the reduction of overall emissions call for the development of ADAS which concern not only safety but also the reduction of vehicle emissions and fuel consumption. In this work a cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) approach is introduced which focuses on these goals. A scenario with two consecutive driving vehicles and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication is considered. The rear vehicle's longitudinal dynamics are controlled by a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) scheme with the target of emission and fuel eficient driving. The prospective velocity of the preceding vehicle is estimated by a prediction model based on the measured inter-vehicle distance and the I2V communication to enable an anticipatory driving behavior for the controlled vehicle. The results of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments on a dynamic engine test bench are presented and show a significant reduction of vehicle emissions and fuel consumption.