skip to main content


Title: Vehicle Path-Tracking Linear-Time-Varying Model Predictive Control Controller Parameter Selection Considering Central Process Unit Computational Load
Model predictive control (MPC) has drawn a considerable amount of attention in automotive applications during the last decade, partially due to its systematic capacity of treating system constraints. Even though having received broad acknowledgements, there still exist two intrinsic shortcomings on this optimization-based control strategy, namely the extensive online calculation burden and the complex tuning process, which hinder MPC from being applied to a wider extent. To tackle these two drawbacks, different methods were proposed. Nevertheless, the majority of these approaches treat these two issues independently. However, parameter tuning in fact has double-sided effects on both the controller performance and the real-time computational burden. Due to the lack of theoretical tools for globally analyzing the complex conflicts among MPC parameter tuning, controller performance optimization, and computational burden easement, a look-up table-based online parameter selection method is proposed in this paper to help a vehicle track its reference path under both the stability and computational capacity constraints. matlab-carsim conjoint simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1901632
NSF-PAR ID:
10113096
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control
Volume:
141
Issue:
5
ISSN:
0022-0434
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Model predictive control (MPC) has become more relevant to vehicle dynamics control due to its inherent capacity of treating system constraints. However, online optimization from MPC introduces an extensive computational burden for today’s onboard microprocessors. To alleviate MPC computational load, several methods have been proposed. Among them, online successive system linearization and the resulting linear time-varying model predictive controller (LTVMPC) is one of the most popular options. Nevertheless, such online successive linearization commonly approximates the original (nonlinear) system by a linear one, which inevitably introduces extra modeling errors and therefore reduces MPC performance. Actually, if the controlled system possesses the “differential flatness” property, then it can be exactly linearized and an equivalent linear model will appear. This linear model maintains all the nonlinear features of the original system and can be utilized to design a flatness-based model predictive controller (FMPC). CarSim-Simulink joint simulations demonstrate that the proposed FMPC substantially outperforms a classical LTVMPC in terms of the path-tracking performance for autonomous vehicles. 
    more » « less
  2. null (Ed.)
    With increase in the frequency of natural disasters such as hurricanes that disrupt the supply from the grid, there is a greater need for resiliency in electric supply. Rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) panels along with batteries can provide resiliency to a house in a blackout due to a natural disaster. Our previous work showed that intelligence can reduce the size of a PV+battery system for the same level of post-blackout service compared to a conventional system that does not employ intelligent control. The intelligent controller proposed is based on model predictive control (MPC), which has two main challenges. One, it requires simple yet accurate models as it involves real-time optimization. Two, the discrete actuation for residential loads (on/off) makes the underlying optimization problem a mixed-integer program (MIP) which is challenging to solve. An attractive alternative to MPC is reinforcement learning (RL) as the real-time control computation is both model-free and simple. These points of interest accompany certain trade-offs; RL requires computationally expensive offline learning, and its performance is sensitive to various design choices. In this work, we propose an RL-based controller. We compare its performance with the MPC controller proposed in our prior work and a non-intelligent baseline controller. The RL controller is found to provide a resiliency performance — by commanding critical loads and batteries—similar to MPC with a significant reduction in computational effort. 
    more » « less
  3. null (Ed.)
    In modern high-performance aircraft, the Fuel Thermal Management System (FTMS) plays a critical role in the overall thermal energy management of the aircraft. Actuator and state constraints in the FTMS limit the thermal endurance and capabilities of the aircraft. Thus, an effective control strategy must plan and execute optimized transient fuel mass and temperature trajectories subject to these constraints over the entire course of operation. For the control of linear systems, hierarchical Model Predictive Control (MPC) has shown to be an effective approach to coordinating both short- and long-term system operation with reduced computational complexity. However, for controlling nonlinear systems, common approaches to system linearization may no longer be effective due to the long prediction horizons of upper-level controllers. This paper explores the limitations of using linear models for hierarchical MPC of the nonlinear FTMS found in aircraft. Numerical simulation results show that linearized models work well for lower-level controllers with short prediction horizons but lead to significant reductions in aircraft thermal endurance when used for upper-level controllers with long prediction horizons. Therefore, a mixed-linearity hierarchical MPC formulation is presented with a nonlinear upper-level controller and a linear lower-level controller to achieve both high performance and high computational efficiency. 
    more » « less
  4. null (Ed.)
    Abstract

    This paper presents a framework to refine identified artificial neural networks (ANN) based state-space linear parameter-varying (LPV-SS) models with closed-loop data using online transfer learning. An LPV-SS model is assumed to be first identified offline using inputs/outputs data and a model predictive controller (MPC) designed based on this model. Using collected closed-loop batch data, the model is further refined using online transfer learning and thus the control performance is improved. Specifically, fine-tuning, a transfer learning technique, is employed to improve the model. Furthermore, the scenario where the offline identified model and the online controlled system are “similar but not identitical” is discussed. The proposed method is verified by testing on an experimentally validated high-fidelity reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) engine model. The verification results show that the new online transfer learning technique combined with an adaptive MPC law improves the engine control performance to track requested engine loads and desired combustion phasing with minimum errors.

     
    more » « less
  5. Matni, Nikolai ; Morari, Manfred ; Pappas, George J. (Ed.)
    Controller tuning is a vital step to ensure a controller delivers its designed performance. DiffTune has been proposed as an automatic tuning method that unrolls the dynamical system and controller into a computational graph and uses auto-differentiation to obtain the gradient for the controller’s parameter update. However, DiffTune uses the vanilla gradient descent to iteratively update the parameter, in which the performance largely depends on the choice of the learning rate (as a hyperparameter). In this paper, we propose to use hyperparameter-free methods to update the controller parameters. We find the optimal parameter update by maximizing the loss reduction, where a predicted loss based on the approximated state and control is used for the maximization. Two methods are proposed to optimally update the parameters and are compared with related variants in simulations on a Dubin’s car and a quadrotor. Simulation experiments show that the proposed first-order method outperforms the hyperparameter-based methods and is more robust than the second-order hyperparameter-free methods. 
    more » « less