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arXiv · 2211.04665

Improving safety in mixed traffic: A learning-based model predictive control for autonomous and human-driven vehicle platooning

Jie Wang·Zhihao Jiang·Yash Vardhan Pant
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Abstract

As autonomous vehicles (AVs) become more common on public roads, their interaction with human-driven vehicles (HVs) in mixed traffic is inevitable. This requires new control strategies for AVs to handle the unpredictable nature of HVs. This study focused on safe control in mixed-vehicle platoons consisting of both AVs and HVs, particularly during longitudinal car-following scenarios. We introduce a novel model that combines a conventional first-principles model with a Gaussian process (GP) machine learning-based model to better predict HV behavior. Our results showed a significant improvement in predicting HV speed, with a 35.64% reduction in the root mean square error compared with the use of the first-principles model alone. We developed a new control strategy called GP-MPC, which uses the proposed HV model for safer distance management between vehicles in the mixed platoon. The GP-MPC strategy effectively utilizes the capacity of the GP model to assess uncertainties, thereby significantly enhancing safety in challenging traffic scenarios, such as emergency braking scenarios. In simulations, the GP-MPC strategy outperformed the baseline MPC method, offering better safety and more efficient vehicle movement in mixed traffic.

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Jie Wang, Zhihao Jiang, Yash Vardhan Pant. 2022-11-09. Improving safety in mixed traffic: A learning-based model predictive control for autonomous and human-driven vehicle platooning. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111673

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