Manuela Tufo

Extended Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

In this paper the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control strategy for vehicles platooning is extended to the case when each vehicle can communicate with a subset of vehicles in the fleet. The control objective is to guarantee that the fleet moves forward with a given spacing policy at the leader velocity. To this aim each vehicle decides its control action using information from all neighboring vehicles through wireless communication. In so doing, a network of dynamical systems is formed, and it is shown that achieving platooning is equivalent to find a control algorithm so that the resulting network is asymptotically stable. A network protocol able to deal with heterogeneous time-varying communication delays is then proposed to solve the problem. A consistent proof of stability of the closed-loop system is provided and numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the approach and its robustness with respect to variations of the leader velocity, as well as to generic topologies of the underlying network emerging from the communication features.

A novel cooperative adaptive cruise control approach: Theory and hardware in the loop experimental validation

In this paper we propose and experimentally validate within an ad hoc Hardware In the Loop (HIL) environment a novel approach for the control of a fleet of vehicles. In particular, the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) for vehicles platooning is extended to the case when, due to the recent advances on vehicular wireless technologies, each vehicle can communicate not only with its follower but also with a subset of vehicles in the fleet. In so doing, a network of dynamical system emerges, and it is shown that the platooning problem is equivalent to find a control algorithm so that the resulting network is asymptotically stable. It is analytically shown that the decentralized control algorithm guarantee exponential stability despite heterogeneous time-varying communication delays which are unavoidable when wireless protocol are used. Finally, experimental results show the effectiveness and the robustness of the control approach also to variations of the leader velocity, as well as to generic topologies of the underlining network emerging from the communication features.

Trusted Information and Security in Smart Mobility Scenarios: The Case of S2-Move Project

Smart cities and smart mobility represent two of the most significative real use case scenarios in which there is an increasing demand for collecting, elaborating, and storing large amounts of heterogenous data. In urban and mobility scenarios issues like data trustiness and data and network security are of paramount importance when considering smart mobility services like real-time traffic status, events reporting, fleets management, smart parking, etc. In this architectural paper, we present the main issues related to trustiness and security in the S2-Move project in which the contribution is to design and implement a complete architecture for providing soft real-time information exchange among citizens, public administrations and transportation systems. In this work, we first describe the S2-Move architecture, all the actors involved in the urban scenario, the communication among devices and the core platform, and a set of mobility services that will be used as a proof of the potentialities of the proposed approach. Then, considering both architecture and the considered mobility services, we discuss the main issues related to trustiness and security we should taken into account in the design of a secure and trusted S2-Move architecture.

Design of a Platoon Management Strategy and Its Hardware-In-the Loop Validation

In this paper we propose an architecture to supervise and operate platoons of vehicles. The resulting system is mainly composed by a decentralized architecture where each vehicle, equipped with an On Board Unit, collects the fundamental data and forwards them to an operation center that stores and reorganizes them. We focus here on the automatons implemented in each system and we show a first prototype for its experimental validation.

On convergence and robustness of the Extended Cooperative Cruise Control

This paper addresses the problem of proving stability for Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), where vehicles communicate via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless technology. The control objective is to guarantee that the vehicle platoon moves with a common reference velocity given a desired spacing policy. The proof of exponential stability of the adaptive cruise control strategy is provided in the presence of time-varying delays and communication structures beyond the classical predecessor-follower architecture. Numerical simulations are included to illustrate and support the theoretical results.

A control strategy for reducing traffic waves in delayed vehicular networks

In this paper we propose a control strategy to reduce traffic waves within a platoon of autonomous and human-driven vehicles that explicitly considers multiple time-varying communication delays. Asymptotic stability is proven by exploiting a proper Lyapunov-Krasovskii function and an estimate of the delays upper-bound is provided. The head-to-tail stability is also analyzed. Numerical analysis and Hardware-In-the-Loop simulation confirm the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

S 2 -MOVE: Smart and Social Move

In this position paper we present S2-MOVE (Smart and Social Move), a social innovation project funded by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education, Research and University). S2-MOVE is based on a new conception of urban community, that allows citizens to share data and decisions in a smart and innovative way. In order to implement this new vision of urban mobility, called smart mobility, a deep integration among citizens, private and public transportation systems and ICT is required. In this new social and challenging scenario, citizens are not just customers of a service, but they produce and share information to obtain a common goal: a smart and efficient mobility, for everyone. S2-MOVE proposes an architecture able to collect, update, and process real-time and heterogeneous information from various electronic devices (tablets, smartphones, electronic control devices in vehicles) and from the actors of the urban scenario (public/private transportation vehicles, pedestrians, infrastructures). Mining such information allows to produce new knowledge which is then made available again to the citizens through specific services. The urban mobility issues to which S2-MOVE can offer a contribution, are linked to two crucial aspects: continuous and shared monitoring for real-time management of urban traffic and an interactive mobile information service for drivers. In this position paper, after introducing the rationale of the project, we describe the main technological aspects involved in the design and in the implementation of the S2-MOVE architecture. Then, we present a proof of the control approach used to create and manage fleets of vehicles and we provide some preliminary results obtained using simulation.

Integrating model to support decision making

The aim of the paper is to investigate the integration of different analytical and simulations tools to support people to make decisions, and to show how the relationships among the different methods can be advantageous to solve specific problems. ORM (object - role modeling), PN (Petri Nets) and SD (System Dynamics) have been combined to capture the static and dynamic aspects of system.

A fleet management service for smart cities: The S 2 -move project

This paper proposes a novel Fleet Management service, suitable for mobility improvement in modern cities. The proposed solution is based on the idea of monitoring and control the vehicles motion in urban environments, aiming to improve road safety, fuel consumption and environmental impact. Vehicles can process real-time data and observe the overall environment through an On-Board Unit (hereafter simply OBU), a smart embedded system installed on the vehicle, and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology for inter-vehicles communication. A map-based interface provides the Fleet Management service to the driver and several experiments conducted in real traffic conditions confirm the effectiveness of the proposed solution.