Distributed Nonlinear Model Predictive Control and Metric Learning for Heterogeneous Vehicle Platooning with Cut-in/Cut-out Maneuvers

Vehicle platooning has been shown to be quite fruitful in the transportation industry to enhance fuel economy, road throughput, and driving comfort. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is widely used in literature for platoon control to achieve certain objectives, such as safely reducing the distance among consecutive vehicles while following the leader vehicle. In this paper, we propose a Distributed Nonlinear MPC (DNMPC), based upon an existing approach, to control a heterogeneous dynamic platoon with unidirectional topologies, handling possible cut-in/cut-out maneuvers. The introduced method guarantees a collision-free driving experience while tracking the desired speed profile and maintaining a safe desired gap among the vehicles. The time of convergence in the dynamic platooning is derived based on the time of cut-in and/or cut-out maneuvers. In addition, we analyze the level of improvement of driving comfort, fuel economy, and absolute and relative convergence of the method by using distributed metric learning and distributed optimization with Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM). Simulation results on a dynamic platoon with cut-in and cut-out maneuvers and with different unidirectional topologies show the effectiveness of the introduced method.