Parsimonious trajectory design of connected automated traffic

• Published in: Transportation research. Part B: methodological Vol. 119; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Authors: Li, Li, Li, Xiaopeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-01-2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Automated vehicles; Automation; Collision avoidance; Collision dynamics; Connected vehicles; Feasibility conditions; Feasibility studies; Mathematical models; Objective function; Parsimonious; Sparsity; Trajectory optimization; Trajectory planning; Travel time; Parsimonious; Feasibility conditions; Connected vehicles; Trajectory planning; Automated vehicles
• ISSN: 0191-2615; 1879-2367
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2018.11.006

•Theoretical properties on feasibility conditions for a general vehicle trajectory planning problem.•Analytical approaches to solve the exact optima to two important boundary trajectory problems.•A discrete-time model with a more general objective function and sparsity requirement.•Use of an l1 norm term in the objective function to help smooth the trajectory shapes.•Applications to platoon control, eco-driving and jam absorption.
One challenging problem about connected automated vehicles is to optimize vehicle trajectories considering realistic constraints (e.g. vehicle kinematic limits and collision avoidance) and objectives (e.g., travel time, fuel consumption). With respect to communication cost and implementation difficulty, parsimonious trajectory planning has attracted continuous interests. In this paper, we first analyze the feasibility conditions for a general continuous-time trajectory planning problem and then propose an analytical solution method for two important boundary trajectory problems. We further propose a discrete-time model with a more general objective function and a certain sparsity requirement that helps parsimonious planned trajectories. This sparsity requirement is implemented with a l1 norm regulatory term appended to the objective function. Numerical examples are conducted on several representative applications and show that the proposed design strategy is effective.