Cooperative Lane-Change Motion Planning for Connected and Automated Vehicle Platoons in Multi-Lane Scenarios

Multi-vehicle motion planning (MVMP) has become an emerging paradigm in connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). The cooperative lane-change movements with the coexistence of platoons and CAVs are typical scenarios on the muti-lane roads. This paper proposes an optimal control framework with the advantages of completeness and universality for platoons and CAVs’ cooperative lane-change motion planning in different task scenarios. Two typical cooperative scenarios are designed for the subsequent study of optimal modeling. The platoons’ reconfiguration and original shape maintenance are considered to reflect the universality of moving objects and the diversity of cooperative tasks. Approximately geometric contour models, dynamic externally tangent rectangle and inflated rectangle, are utilized to describe the platoon’s profile. Analytical complete collision avoidance constraints among different motion objects are constructed effectively. Other necessary constraints and the weighted cost function that minimizes lane-change time and motion energy are comprehensively considered. The optimal control models are established for the desired scenarios. Moreover, a numerical solution method combined with the simultaneous direct collocation method based on the trapezoidal rule and the barrier function method is proposed to obtain the optimal schemes. Simulation and contrast experiments are conducted for two scenarios. The results indicate that the cost function’s weight coefficients and specific lane-change tasks influence the cooperative motion planning effects and verify that the proposed optimal control framework is of reasonability, effectiveness, and unification.