Autonomous cruise control with a minimal order Quasi-linear controller

Continuous growth of population all over the world creates a great challenge to the transport management systems. The future intelligent transportation systems incorporates one important aspect of automation components which is the design of intelligent control systems that enables the system to behave autonomously, hence ensuring safety, comfort and best usage of available infrastructure. In this paper, a novel control strategy based on Quasi-linear feedback control is adopted for a longitudinal vehicle model. A thirdorder nonlinear system models the vehicle and power train dynamics. The system is feedback linearized and the resultant dynamics of the feedback linearized system correspond to a certain class of linear systems, which makes it attractive for the application of a simpler order feedback control designed on the basis of quasi-linear feedback theory. The designed controller not only guarantees asymptotic tracking of the desired trajectories, but also ensures safety and ride comfort under the constraints of physical limitations inherent in the system. The results are compared with the well established LQR optimal control theory, where a priori choice of the weights in the local quadratic criteria allows obtaining diverse desired overall system characteristics. The performance analysis reveals that the new quasi-linear strategy yields valid results.