Distributed platoon control enables safe smooth vehicle crossing at intersections
Distributed Platoon Control for Safe and Smooth Crossing at an Unsignalized Intersection-Part I: Stability Analysis
Robotics
Summary
Vehicles traveling in groups often face challenges when crossing intersections without traffic lights, risking safety and smooth traffic flow. The authors designed a system where each vehicle controls itself in coordination with others to cross these intersections safely and smoothly. They studied conditions to ensure all vehicles eventually settle into a steady pattern of common speed, avoiding crashes. They confirmed their system works well using advanced driving simulations with different car models.
What this means in practice
- •For automotive engineers: Implement distributed vehicle controllers to coordinate safe and smooth crossings at unsignalized intersections in connected vehicle systems.
- •For traffic simulation developers: Use the proposed control methods to improve realism and safety outcomes in multi-vehicle intersection scenarios within traffic simulation software.
Authors
Bin-Bin Hu, Shuwei Pei, Saeed Ahmed, Bayu Jayawardhana
Abstract
We propose a distributed platoon controller that guarantees safe and smooth crossing of multi-vehicle systems at an unsignalized intersection. To support the stability analysis, we consider a multi-vehicle platoon maneuvering along a closed path with a single unsignalized intersection. Unlike traditional bi-level decoupled designs on open paths, which primarily focus on intersection control while neglecting its coupling with platoon convergence, and thus hindering rigorous convergence analysis, the closed-path setting allows us to analyze the asymptotic behavior of the platoon. The local exponential convergence analysis of the switched closed-loop system, induced by repeated vehicle switching at the intersection, is presented. Under some mild conditions on the controller gains, we show that safe intersection crossing is ensured during the transient phase and smooth crossing is achieved in steady state, where all vehicles travel at a common constant speed while avoiding collisions at the intersection. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed distributed controller is demonstrated in a high-fidelity CARLA simulator using multiple commercial vehicle models.