Development of Two-Step Model Predictive Control for an Adaptive Cruise Control System

This paper introduces an adaptive cruise control (ACC) of a vehicle based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) as a high-level controller of the ACC system. This high-level controller calculates the desired acceleration for a low-level controller. Also, this paper presents a longitudinal dynamic model of a vehicle consisting of the dynamics of the powertrain and the dynamics of external forces. In addition to establishing a steady spacing distance between two vehicles, avoiding collision, and keeping the acceleration calculation within permitted limits, a method is proposed to speed up the algorithm and reduce the computational effort. Finally, two driving scenarios were used to validate the proposed method, and a comparison of the performance between the original MPC and the speedup MPC was introduced. The simulation results showed that the host vehicle tracked the preceding vehicle accurately for the proposed controller without collision. Moreover, it showed that the execution time required for the proposed method was less than that of the original MPC controller.