Optimal parameter selection of a Model Predictive Control algorithm for energy efficient driving of heavy duty vehicles

This paper presents an improved approach to the problem of energy efficient driving of heavy duty vehicles. The proposed model for a map-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) leads to an underlying Quadratic Programming (QP) optimization problem, allowing computationally efficient and robust solutions. A parameter estimation procedure is developed for a vehicle- and optimization-independent parametrization of the tradeoff between saving energy and keeping a desired vehicle velocity. Extensive simulations on a highway scenario for different optimization parameters give further insight to optimization properties, which can be utilized to enhance control performance. Compared to previous literature, we demonstrate a significant improvement of the computation time to under one-fifth of a millisecond, while maintaining (or even increasing) the fuel consumption reduction, which is 8.1 percent with the proposed approach compared to a standard cruise controller, without a decrease in the average cruising speed.