Cooperative Mandatory Lane Change for Connected Vehicles on Signalized Intersection Roads

This paper presents a hierarchical control architecture to coordinate a group of connected vehicles on signalized intersection roads, where vehicles are allowed to change lane to follow a prescribed path. The proposed hierarchical control strategy consists of two control levels: a high level controller at the intersection and a decentralized low level controller in each car. In the hierarchical control architecture, the centralized intersection controller estimates the target velocity for each approaching connected vehicle to avoid red light stop based on the signal phase and timing (SPAT) information. Each connected vehicle as a decentralized controller utilizes model predictive control (MPC) to track the target velocity in a fuel efficient manner. The main objective in this paper is to consider mandatory lane changes. As in the realistic scenarios, vehicles are not required to drive in single lane. More specifically, they more likely change their lanes prior to signals. Hence, the vehicle decentralized controllers must prepare to cooperate with the vehicle that has a mandatory lane change request (host vehicle). The cooperative mandatory lane change is accomplished by inserting a virtual vehicle on the host vehicle’s target lane. The simulation results show the advantage of our proposed approach on both the lane change duration and vehicle fuel economy.