California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

In this research, the authors focus on the problem of designing hierarchical, hybrid controllers for large scale systems. An overview of the proposed design process is first given. A modeling formalism is then introduced which allows for the modeling of multi-agent systems with hybrid dynamics in a modular fashion. An algorithm that makes use of ideas from game theory to capture the interaction between the agents, derive continuous controllers and quantify the discrete coordination needed to achieve certain performance objectives is presented. The algorithm is then applied to the problem of automated vehicle following. The study concludes with a summary of the proposed scheme and highlights of the major points.