A Coalitional MPC Approach to Control of Collaborative Vehicle Platoons

Abstract

This work presents a coalitional model predictive controller for collaborative vehicle platoons. The overall system is modeled as a string of locally controlled vehicles that can share data through a wireless communication network. The vehicles can dynamically form disjoint groups that coordinate their actions, i.e., the so-called coalitions. The control goals are keeping a desired reference distance between all vehicles while allowing for occasional switching of the communication topology. Likewise, the presented controller promotes a string-stable evolution of the platoon system. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the proposed approach.