Cooperative energy and time-optimal lane change maneuvers with minimal highway traffic disruption

We derive optimal control policies for a Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) and cooperating neighboring CAVs to carry out a lane change maneuver consisting of a longitudinal phase where the CAV properly positions itself relative to the cooperating neighbors and a lateral phase where it safely changes lanes. In contrast to prior work on this problem, where the CAV “selfishly” only seeks to minimize its maneuver time, we seek to ensure that the fast-lane traffic flow is minimally disrupted (through a properly defined metric). Additionally, when performing lane-changing maneuvers, we optimally select the cooperating vehicles from a set of feasible neighboring vehicles and experimentally show that the highway throughput is improved compared to the baseline case of human-driven vehicles changing lanes with no cooperation. When feasible solutions do not exist for a given maximal allowable disruption, we include a time relaxation method trading off a longer maneuver time with reduced disruption. Our analysis is also extended to multiple sequential maneuvers. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our controllers in terms of safety guarantees and up to 16% and 90% average throughput and maneuver time improvement respectively when compared to maneuvers with no vehicle cooperation.