Cooperative adaptive cruise control presents an opportunity to improve road transportation through increase in road capacity and reduction in energy use and accidents. Clever design of control algorithms and communication systems is required to ensure that the vehicle platoon is stable and meets desired safety requirements. In this paper, we propose a centralized model predictive controller for a heterogeneous platoon of vehicles to reach a desired platoon velocity and individual inter-vehicle distances with driver-selected headway time. As a novel concept, we allow for interruption from a human driver in the platoon that temporarily takes control of their vehicle with the assumption that the driver will, at minimum, obey legal velocity limits and the physical performance constraints of their vehicle. The finite horizon cost function of our proposed platoon controller is inspired from the infinite horizon design. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first platoon controller that integrates human-driven vehicles. We illustrate the performance of our proposed design with a numerical study, demonstrating that the safety distance, velocity, and actuation constraints are obeyed. Additionally, in simulation we illustrate a key property of string stability where the impact of a disturbance is reduced through the platoon.

翻译：协同自适应巡航控制通过提升道路容量、降低能源消耗及事故率，为改善公路运输提供了机遇。为实现车辆编队稳定性并满足预期安全要求，需设计精妙的控制算法与通信系统。本文提出一种集中式模型预测控制器，用于异质车辆编队实现目标编队速度与驾驶员选定时距下的个体车间距。作为创新理念，我们允许编队内人类驾驶员临时接管车辆控制权，并假设其至少遵守法定限速及车辆物理性能约束。所提编队控制器的有限时域代价函数受无限时域设计启发。据我们所知，这是首个整合人驾车辆的编队控制器。通过数值研究验证了设计性能，证明其满足安全距离、速度及执行约束。此外，仿真中展示了队列稳定性的关键特性——扰动影响在编队传播过程中逐渐衰减。