Cooperative Traction Controller of Heavy-Haul Train With Actuator Saturation: A Multi-Agent System Approach

In the paper, the traction model of the heavy-haul train is formulated firstly in a novel way. And then, a decentralized cooperative controller is proposed to achieve autonomous driving in the traction process of heavy-haul train. The proposed controller includes two parts, one is the coupler compensator, the other is the cooperative controller, and then the power is decentralized on the locomotive. The coupler compensator solves the thorny coupling problem of coupler force by using the fully-actuated and multi-agent ideas. It is converted into the platoon problem in the vehicle. While the cooperative controller addresses the synchronization problem of velocity among cars with the help of some additional sensors and devices. In addition, the stability analysis of the system with saturation actuator is also considered in this paper. And then, a numerical simulation shows the effectiveness of the proposed controller with an actual case in the light of Matlab. Finally, our method’s correctness is verified by Universal Mechanism (UM) platform.