Energy Optimization for Commercial Vehicle Platoon with Optimal Sliding Mode Control

This paper investigates the energy optimization for a group of commercial vehicles. In order to diminish the platoon energy consumption, a commercial vehicle platoon model is constructed with the quaternino-based approach, which takes the nonlinear dynamics of vehicles and the inter-vehicle spacing for minimal air resistance into consideration. Then, an optimal sliding mode control (OSMC) method is proposed with optimal control and integral sliding mode control (ISMC). In this method, the energy optimal trajectory can be obtained with optimal control. The sliding mode switching function is designed to ensure that the sliding mode motion is equivalent to moving along the energy optimal trajectory, so as to realize robustness improvement and energy consumption optimization. Moreover, the stability of proposed OSMC method is strictly analyzed. In final, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of our proposed approach.