Abstract:

A multi-vehicle collaborative path planning method based on distributed model predictive control (DMPC) was proposed to address the conflict issues in the intelligent connected autonomous driving environment at signal-free intersections with multiple vehicles, The approach employed a distributed model predictive control framework for independent calculations among multiple vehicles. It utilizes a rolling temporal prediction of surrounding vehicle trajectories to facilitate future state interactions between vehicles. The planning results were shared based on the vehicle-vehicle interaction communication feature in the intelligent connected environment. The method introduced safety constraints such as road boundary constraints, acceleration constraints, and collision constraints. The safety trajectory for multiple vehicles to safely navigate through a signal-free intersection was computed through quadratic programming. The effectiveness of the proposed method was validated by establishing a signal-free intersection environment using the MATLAB driving scenario designer module under two different scenarios. The results show that under straight and curved driving conditions, the inter-vehicle minimum distances are 2.58 m and 2.99 m, respectively, meeting the safety distance constraints for collision avoidance. The method achieves collaborative collision avoidance among multiple vehicles while ensuring passage efficiency.

Key words: automotive engineering, signal-free intersection, multi-vehicle cooperation, distributed model predictive control (DMPC), path planning