Intersection Vehicle Cooperative Eco-Driving in the Context of Partially Connected Vehicle Environment

Vehicles with communication functionality are appearing on the roads and transition towards a fully connected vehicle environment will be gradual. Infra-vehicle communication can play a major role in promoting traffic performance in a partially connected vehicle environment. This paper addresses such a real traffic context to present a vehicle control system for eco-driving based on intersection vehicle cooperation. More specifically, the proposed system measures the state of the preceding vehicle by own sensors, and receives information from upcoming intersection signal that exists within the communication range. Next, based on the predicted behavior of the preceding vehicle in a look forward horizon and traffic signal timing, the optimal acceleration of the vehicle is generated in a model predictive control framework. The velocity of the vehicle is dynamically tuned to reduce or avoid idling in red signals either by speeding up or slowing down early, considering constraint imposed by any unconnected preceding vehicles. The proposed eco-driving system is evaluated through microscopic simulation.