Design and Experimental Implementation of Longitudinal Control for Automated Transit Buses

This work presents the design and experimental implementation of longitudinal control for automated transit buses. Using the rich set of information available via in-vehicle serial data networks and sensors, it is shown how the modeling can be simplified and validated effectively. Furthermore, the control model is unified to consider both a 40-foot transit bus and a 60-foot articulated bus. A longitudinal controller based on a nonlinear control technique, called dynamic surface control (DSC), is designed for the speed and distance following. This approach allows us to reduce the complexity of the controller as well as time for experimentally tuning the controller gains. Finally, the performance of the proposed longitudinal controller for two different types of transit buses is shown through experimental tests in the terms of speed and distance tracking errors.