Autonomous Mobile Vehicles and String Stability of Interconnected Vehicles
by Sinan Öncü
(Ford Otosan, Istanbul Sancaktepe R&D Center)
DATE : October 19, 2018 (Friday)
TIME : 14:00-15:00
ROOM : VYKM 2
Abstract:
Part 1-Overview of Past Research Projects on Autonomous Mobile Vehicles
In this introductory part of the presentation, an overview of past research experiences on autonomous mobile vehicle platforms will be presented with some example applications within the field of automotive and robotics. Some design considerations such as sensor and actuator selections besides the different modelling and control approaches for the realizations will be discussed on the following automated vehicle platforms:
- Autonomous Parallel Parking of a Car-Like Mobile Robot,
- Yaw Stability Control of a Car with Active Steering,
- A Man-portable Rover Operating on Rough Terrains,
- Cooperative Automated Maneuvering Vehicles,
- EcoTwin: Truck Platooning on Highways,
- Clara: A Warehouse Robot with Robust Multi-Sensor Localization,
- Wasteshark: An Aqua-Drone for Cleaning Plastic Waste from the Harbors and Rivers.
Part 2-String Stability of Interconnected Vehicles: Network-aware Modelling, Analysis and Experiments
The ever-increasing demand for mobility in today’s life brings additional burden on the existing ground transportation and logistic infrastructure, for which a feasible solution in the near future lies in more efficient use of currently available means of transportation. For this purpose, development of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) technologies that contribute to improved traffic flow stability, throughput, and safety is needed. Cooperative Automated Vehicles (CAVs) being one of the promising C-ITS technologies, extends the currently available Advanced Driver Assistance Systems technologies with the addition of information exchange between vehicles through Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) wireless communication.A particularly interesting application is the vehicle platooning concept. The general objective of vehicular platooning is to pack the driving vehicles together as tightly as possible in order to increase traffic throughput while preventing amplification of disturbances throughout the string, the latter of which is known as string instability. This technology relies on longitudinal control known as Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC). In the scope of CACC, control over a wireless communication network is the enabling technology that makes this realizable; however, given the fact that multiple nodes (vehicles) share the same medium with a limited bandwidth and capacity, wireless communication introduces network-induced imperfections such as transmission delays and packet losses. The impact of these imperfections on string stability requires a careful analysis and tradeoffs between control performance and network specifications need to be made for achieving desired performance under these network-induced constraints. Therefore, in this study we present the design of a CACC system from a Networked Control System (NCS) perspective and a novel modelling framework is introduced. This modelling framework is extended with analysis tools for string stability in the presence of network effects. These analyses can provide the designer with guidelines for making multidisciplinary design tradeoffs between control and network specifications and support the design of CACC systems that are robust to uncertainties introduced by wireless communication. Moreover, the validity of the presented analysis framework is demonstrated via experimental results performed with CACC-equipped prototype vehicles. Experimental results show that the developed NCS modelling framework captures the dependency of string stability on network-induced effects and confirm the string stable operation conditions obtained by model-based analyses.
Short Bio:
Sinan Öncü received the B.Sc. degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering and the M.Sc. degree in mechatronics engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2005 and 2008, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 2014. From 2013 to 2016, he was affiliated with the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), The Netherlands, where he worked as a research scientist on the realization of cooperative automated vehicle technologies and their demonstrations with prototype vehicles to governmental institutes, industrial partners, and stakeholders; amongst which are most notably: the first automated driving demo in the Netherlands on public roads in 2013, and The European Truck Platooning Challenge in 2016. Since December 2017, he works as a Senior Software Engineer at Ford Otosan in Istanbul Sancaktepe R&D Center and leads the Horizon2020 project “Optimal fuel consumption with Predictive Power Train Control and calibration for intelligent trucks” (optiTruck). His current research focuses on the development of optimization-based predictive power management control systems for heavy duty trucks. Besides his professional research activities, he is enthusiastic about motorcycles and their dynamics. He combines this interest with travelling, camping, and photography. He enjoys going on long trips with his self-instrumented motorcycle and collects road data for his hobby project on developing an advisory system for safety improvement for motorcyclists.
