A Receding-Horizon Framework for Co-Optimizing the Velocity and Power-Split of Automated Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a control framework to co-optimize the velocity and power-split operation of a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) online in the presence of traffic constraints. The principal challenge in its online implementation lies in the conflict between the long control horizon required for global optimality and limits in available computational power. To resolve the conflict between the length of horizon and its computation complexity, we propose a receding-horizon strategy where co-states are used to approximate the future cost, helping to shorten the prediction horizon. In particular, we update the co-state using a nominal trajectory and the temporal-difference (TD) error based on co-state dynamics. Our simulation results demonstrate a 12% fuel economy improvement over the sequential/layered control strategy for a given driving scenario. Moreover, its real-time practicality is evidenced by a computation time per model predictive controller (MPC) step on average of around 80 ms within a 10 s prediction horizon.