Integrating Safe and Energy-Optimal Control for Trucks

This project addressed the joint problem of safety and energy efficiency for connected automated trucks. Rather than treating safety and fuel economy as competing objectives, we developed a unified framework that satisfies hard safety constraints while optimizing energy consumption in real traffic scenarios.

Key contributions:

Combined CBF-based safety constraints with energy-optimal control objectives
Demonstrated fuel savings while maintaining safety guarantees on highway driving
Experimental validation on a Class-8 truck in collaboration with Navistar, Inc.

Related publications: (Alan et al., 2023; Alan et al., 2023; Alan et al., 2022)

References

2023

IEEE TIV

Integrating safety with performance in connected automated truck control: experimental validation

Anil Alan, Chaozhe R. He, Tamás G. Molnár, and 3 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2023

DOI Bib

@article{alan2023integrating,
  title = {Integrating safety with performance in connected automated truck control: experimental validation},
  author = {Alan, Anil and He, Chaozhe R. and Moln{\'a}r, Tam{\'a}s G. and Mathew, Johaan C. and Bell, Aaron H. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  volume = {9},
  number = {1},
  pages = {3075--3088},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/TIV.2023.3340807}
}

IEEE TCST

Control barrier functions and input-to-state safety with application to automated vehicles

Anil Alan, Andrew J. Taylor, Chaozhe R. He, and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2023

DOI Bib

@article{alan2023cbf_iss,
  title = {Control barrier functions and input-to-state safety with application to automated vehicles},
  author = {Alan, Anil and Taylor, Andrew J. and He, Chaozhe R. and Ames, Aaron D. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
  volume = {31},
  number = {6},
  pages = {2744--2759},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/TCST.2023.3286090}
}

2022

IEEE L-CSS

Safe controller synthesis with tunable input-to-state safe control barrier functions

Anil Alan, Andrew J. Taylor, Chaozhe R. He, and 2 more authors

IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2022

DOI Bib

@article{alan2022safe,
  title = {Safe controller synthesis with tunable input-to-state safe control barrier functions},
  author = {Alan, Anil and Taylor, Andrew J. and He, Chaozhe R. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor and Ames, Aaron D.},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  volume = {6},
  pages = {908--913},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3086854}
}