Flexible Eco-cruising Strategy for Connected and Automated Vehicles with Efficient Driving Lane Planning and Speed Optimization

Eco-cruising control of vehicles is a potential approach for improving vehicle energy efficiency and reducing travel time. However, many eco-cruising studies merely focused on vehicle longitudinal speed optimization but overlooked the lane change maneuvers, which may impair the benefits of eco-cruising when the vehicle encounters the slowly moving preceding vehicle. This study proposes a flexible eco-cruising strategy (FECS) with efficient driving lane planning and speed optimization capabilities simultaneously for connected and automated vehicles. The FECS is designed with a hierarchical control framework, where the first layer uses the Dijkstra algorithm to plan an efficient driving lane sequence considering the long-term effect of the preceding vehicles, then guides the second layer to optimize the vehicle’s speed for saving energy using trigonometric speed profile. The optimized driving trajectory is implemented in the third layer by regulating the speed and yaw angle for guaranteeing safe inter-vehicle distance when uncertainties are present. Finally, stochastic simulation with randomized traffic flows and typical case analysis based on real-world traffic data are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the FECS. The results manifest FECS’s capability of lowering driving costs in moderate-flow and free-flow traffic. However, we note that the benefits are less pronounced in congested-flow traffic.