No Arabic abstract
In recent years, the development of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology has inspired numerous advanced applications targeted at improving existing transportation systems. As one of the widely studied applications of CAV technology, connected eco-driving takes advantage of Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) information from traffic signals to enable CAVs to approach and depart from signalized intersections in an energy-efficient manner. However the majority of the connected eco-driving studies have been numerical or microscopic traffic simulations. Only few studies have implemented the application on real vehicles, and even fewer have been focused on heavy-duty trucks. In this study, we developed a connected eco-driving system and equipped it on a heavy-duty diesel truck using cellular-based wireless communications. Field trials were conducted in the City ofCarson, California, along two corridors with six connected signalized intersections capable of communicating their SPaT information. Early results showed the benefits of the system in smoothing the speed profiles of the equipped truck when approaching the connected signalized intersections.
Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs), particularly those with a hybrid electric powertrain, have the potential to significantly improve vehicle energy savings in real-world driving conditions. In particular, the Eco-Driving problem seeks to design optimal speed and power usage profiles based on available information from connectivity and advanced mapping features to minimize the fuel consumption over an itinerary. This paper presents a hierarchical multi-layer Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach for improving the fuel economy of a 48V mild-hybrid powertrain in a connected vehicle environment. Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) is used to solve the Receding Horizon Optimal Control Problem (RHOCP), where the terminal cost for the RHOCP is approximated as the base-policy obtained from the long-term optimization. The controller was extensively tested virtually (using both deterministic and Monte Carlo simulations) across multiple real-world routes where energy savings of more than 20% have been demonstrated. Further, the developed controller was deployed and tested at a proving ground in real-time on a test vehicle equipped with a rapid prototyping embedded controller. Real-time in-vehicle testing confirmed the energy savings observed in simulation and demonstrated the ability of the developed controller to be effective in real-time applications.
Connected and Automated Hybrid Electric Vehicles have the potential to reduce fuel consumption and travel time in real-world driving conditions. The eco-driving problem seeks to design optimal speed and power usage profiles based upon look-ahead information from connectivity and advanced mapping features. Recently, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has been applied to the eco-driving problem. While the previous studies synthesize simulators and model-free DRL to reduce online computation, this work proposes a Safe Off-policy Model-Based Reinforcement Learning algorithm for the eco-driving problem. The advantages over the existing literature are three-fold. First, the combination of off-policy learning and the use of a physics-based model improves the sample efficiency. Second, the training does not require any extrinsic rewarding mechanism for constraint satisfaction. Third, the feasibility of trajectory is guaranteed by using a safe set approximated by deep generative models. The performance of the proposed method is benchmarked against a baseline controller representing human drivers, a previously designed model-free DRL strategy, and the wait-and-see optimal solution. In simulation, the proposed algorithm leads to a policy with a higher average speed and a better fuel economy compared to the model-free agent. Compared to the baseline controller, the learned strategy reduces the fuel consumption by more than 21% while keeping the average speed comparable.
Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) rely on the correctness of position and other vehicle kinematics information to fulfill various driving tasks such as vehicle following, lane change, and collision avoidance. However, a malicious vehicle may send false sensor information to the other vehicles intentionally or unintentionally, which may cause traffic inconvenience or loss of human lives. Here, we take the advantage of cloud-computing and increase the resilience of CAVs to malicious vehicles by assuming each vehicle shares its local sensor information with other vehicles to create information redundancy on the cloud side. We exploit this redundancy and propose a sensor fusion algorithm for the cloud, capable of providing a robust state estimation of all vehicles in the cloud under the condition that the number of malicious information is sufficiently small. Using the proposed estimator, we provide an algorithm for isolating malicious vehicles. We use numerical examples to illustrate the effectiveness of our methods.
The fast-slow dynamics of an eco-evolutionary system are studied, where we consider the feedback actions of environmental resources that are classified into those that are self-renewing and those externally supplied. We show although these two types of resources are drastically different, the resulting closed-loop systems bear close resemblances, which include the same equilibria and their stability conditions on the boundary of the phase space, and the similar appearances of equilibria in the interior. After closer examination of specific choices of parameter values, we disclose that the global dynamical behaviors of the two types of closed-loop systems can be fundamentally different in terms of limit cycles: the system with self-renewing resources undergoes a generalized Hopf bifurcation such that one stable limit cycle and one unstable limit cycle can coexist; the system with externally supplied resources can only have the stable limit cycle induced by a supercritical Hopf bifurcation. Finally, the explorative analysis is carried out to show the discovered dynamic behaviors are robust in even larger parameter space.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play an increasingly important role in military, public, and civilian applications, where providing connectivity to UAVs is crucial for its real-time control, video streaming, and data collection. Considering that cellular networks offer wide area, high speed, and secure wireless connectivity, cellular-connected UAVs have been considered as an appealing solution to provide UAV connectivity with enhanced reliability, coverage, throughput, and security. Due to the nature of UAVs mobility, the throughput, reliability and End-to-End (E2E) delay of UAVs communication under various flight heights, video resolutions, and transmission frequencies remain unknown. To evaluate these parameters, we develop a cellular-connected UAV testbed based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network with its uplink video transmission and downlink control&command (CC) transmission. We also design algorithms for sending control signal and controlling UAV. The indoor experimental results provide fundamental insights for the cellular-connected UAV system design from the perspective of transmission frequency, adaptability, and link outage, respectively.