IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO.
3, JUNE 2015
Fast Online Computation of a Model Predictive
Controller and Its Application to Fuel
Economy–Oriented Adaptive Cruise Control
Shengbo Eben Li, Zhenzhong Jia, Keqiang Li, and Bo Cheng
Abstract—The recent progress of advanced vehicle control sys-
tems presents a great opportunity for the application of model
predictive control (MPC) in the automotive industry. However,
high computational complexity inherently associated with the
receding horizon optimization must be addressed to achieve
real-time implementation. This paper presents a generic scale re-
duction framework to reduce the online computational burden of
MPC controllers. A lower dimensional MPC algorithm is formu-
lated by combining an existing “move blocking ” strategy with a
“constraint-set compression” strategy, which is proposed to fur-
ther reduce the problem scale by partially relaxing inequality
constraints in the prediction horizon. The closed-loop stability is
guaranteed by adding terminal zero-state constraint. The trade-
off between control optimality and computational intensity is
achieved by proper design of the blocking and compression ma-
trices. The fast algorithm has been applied on intelligent vehicular
longitudinal automation, implemented as a fuel economy-oriented
adaptive cruise controller and experimentally evaluated by a series
of real-time simulations and field tests. These results indicate that
the proposed method significantly improves the computational
speed while maintaining satisfactory control optimality without
sacrificing the desired performance.
Index Terms—Adaptive cruise control (ACC), computation effi-
ciency, fuel economy, model predictive control (MPC).
I. I NTRODUCTION
I NTENDED to assist drivers during the driving process and
improve road safety, advanced vehicle control systems have
been investigated by both academia and industry for decades
to control some aspects of vehicle dynamics, e.g., antiskid
traction/braking, desired yaw motion, and longitudinal/lateral
automation. Related technologies have also progressed from
previously basic functional realization to today’s focus on
Manuscript received May 21, 2013; revised October 31, 2013, January 22,
2014, May 14, 2014, and August 10, 2014; accepted August 28, 2014. Date of
publication September 16, 2014; date of current version May 29, 2015. This
work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grant 51205228 and in part by the Tsinghua University Initiative
Scientific Research Program under Grant 2012THZ0. The Associate Editor for
this paper was A. Hegyi.
S. E. Li is with the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy,
Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 10084,
China (e-mail: lisb04@gmail.com).
Z. Jia is with the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineer-
ing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA (e-mail: zhenzjia@
umich.edu).
K. Li and B. Cheng are with the Department of Automotive Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing 10084, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2014.2354052
1524-9050 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1199
performance maximization and cost minimization. Such a trend
presents a great opportunity to use model predictive control
(MPC) theory in automotive industry because of its exceptional
capability in implementing optimal control while explicitly
handling nonlinearities and constraints [1]–[4].
A typical application of MPC in automotive field is the vehic-
ular longitudinal automation, e.g. adaptive cruise control (ACC)
[2], [3]. Motivated by the growing concern on energy crisis,
researchers started to explore fuel economy-oriented ACC tech-
niques. This kind of design highly demands an optimal or quasi-
optimal controller, which can possess desirable optimality of
predefined cost function while still reserving the ability to
handle constraint and nonlinearity. Li et al. [5] have showed the
effectiveness of MPC-based ACC in improving fuel economy
through simulation studies. However, the high computational
burden associated with the receding horizon optimization must
be mitigated for real-time implementations.
In MPC, a plant model is used to predict the state evolution
over a future horizon, whereas an optimization problem (min-
imizing a cost function of state variables and control inputs
in the prediction horizon) is solved to determine the optimal
control sequence [6], [7]. One critical challenge for MPC is
the computational burden in numerical optimization. This may
not be a problem in process control applications because of
relatively slow plant dynamics, infrequent control updates, and
abundant computing power [7]. It, however, becomes critical
for applications with fast dynamics (e.g., vehicles and robots)
and/or limited computing power (e.g., on-board single-chip
controllers).
The computational issue of MPC motivates researchers to
explore more efficient computing techniques [7], some of which
are summarized as follows. An approach to achieve fast com-
putation is to utilize the structural sparseness of predictive
controllers. By properly reordering the manipulated variables
related to the sparse matrices, an interior-point method could
become more efficient during directional search [8]. This type
of sparse formulation can be used to reduce computational time
of applications with large horizons without jeopardizing the
closed-loop stability. Another scheme is called explicit MPC,
which is often used for linear or piecewise affine linear plants
with 1-, 2- or ∞-norm-based costs and linear constraints [7]. In
this method, an explicit solution is generated offline by using
multiparametric programming [9]–[12]. The control input is
then calculated through a preprepared lookup table, thereby
greatly simplifying online computation. One major problem
associated with this approach is the large online data storage
1200 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, JUNE 2015

requirements for high-order controllers due to exponentially
increasing complexity.
In engineering practices, an effective approach to reduce
the computational intensity is to reformulate the original MPC
problem as a lower order optimization problem by reducing
the dimension of manipulated variables. Two examples are
the parameterization method [13] and the “move blocking
(MB)” method [14]–[16]. The former often assumes a priori
knowledge of the control law, which can be approximated by
a parameterized function (with less unknowns to reduce the
order of the original problem), e.g., polynomial [13]. However,
this method may change the structure of the original problem
due to specific parameterized functions used, thereby resulting
in pseudo-optimal solutions and losing the degree of control
optimality. In the MB method, the number of free variables
is reduced by fixing the input or its derivatives to be constant
over several time steps by using a “blocking matrix” [14]. This
straightforward method can be easily integrated with other fast-
computing schemes.
The purpose of this paper is to extend the MB scale re-
duction strategy by introducing an additional “constraint-set
compression (CSC)” strategy capable of further reducing the
computational intensity of MPC for real-time implementation,
particularly in the fields of engineering practice, e.g., auto-
motive control techniques. The remainder of this paper is
organized as follows. Section II reviews a simplified MPC
formulation, followed by a brief analysis of its problem scale
and computational complexity. Section III presents a generic
scale reduction framework for the MPC optimization problem,
together with the aforementioned MB strategy and the proposed
CSC strategy. The MPC-based vehicular adaptive cruise con-
troller is presented in Section IV. Application of the proposed
fast MPC algorithm to ACC is evaluated through real-time
simulation and field tests in Sections V and VI, respectively.
The last section concludes this paper.
II. P ROBLEM S TATEMENT
Consider a nonlinear (but affine with respect to the input)
system in the discrete-time domain
xk+1 = f (xk ) + g(xk ) · uk
where u ∈ Rm is the control input, x ∈ Rl is the system state,
and f (·) and g(·) are nonlinear functions of x. The pair (x, u) =
(0, 0) is the exclusive equilibrium point of (1).The receding
horizon optimization problem has the following form:
function with respect to the pair (x, u) and satisfies l(0, 0) = 0.
Other constraints on x and u can also exist in the aforemen-
tioned problem but omitted here for narrative simplicity. For
the sake of convenience, we introduce three column vectors,
i.e., Uk ∈ RP m , Umax ∈ RP m , and Vmax u
∈ RP m , defined as
 T
Uk = uT0|k , . . . , uTP −1|k
 T
Umax = uTmax , . . . , uTmax
 T
u
Vmax = (vmaxu
)T , . . . , (vmax
u
)T . (4)
Similar definition can be found for state vector Xk ∈ RP l .
Plugging (1) and (4) into (2) and (3), the MPC problem is
transformed into a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem [6]
min J = L(Xk , Uk ) + ρε2k (5)
subject to set Θ
 
 Uk
Θ = Uk , εk [IU − Vmax
u
] ≤ Umax (6)
εk
where L(·) is assumed to be a convex function, i.e., IU = IP m
(unity matrix).
For an NLP problem, its computational intensity depends on
three aspects: 1) problem style; 2) problem scale; and 3) opti-
mization algorithm to be used. The change of problem style and
the improvement of optimization algorithm are not the focus
of this paper. How to reduce the problem scale is more pre-
ferred in engineering practice due to its easy-to-use and in-field
flexibility. For example, the scale of a commonly constructed
optimization problem relies on two critical factors: the number
of manipulated variables NA and the number of inequality con-
straints NB [17]. In the Dantzig–Wolfe algorithm introduced in
[18], the required iteration is often no less than Niter , which is
equal to the sum of NA and NB . Hence, the scale reduction is
expected to reduce the computing time effectively.
III. F RAMEWORK OF P ROBLEM S CALE R EDUCTION
The scale reduction framework consists of two parts, i.e.,
(1) “MB” and “CSC.” The former aims to reduce the number of
manipulated input variables in the predictive horizon, whereas
the latter aims to reduce the number of inequality constraints.
A. MB Strategy


P −1 A common strategy to reduce the computational complexity
min J = l(xi+1|k , ui|k ) + ρ · ε2k . (2) of optimal control is to reduce degrees of freedom by fixing
u
i=0 the control input (or the control increment) to be constant over
several steps. This policy is referred to as “MB” [14]. Instead
Subject to (1) and constraint
of solving for the optimal Uk ∈ RP m , problem (5) is restated
ui|k ≤ umax + εk · vmax
u
, i=0:P −1 (3) in terms of solving for a lower order vector
 T
where P is the length of the prediction horizon, xi|k is the Zk = z0|kT T
, . . . , zQ−1|k ∈ RQm (Q < P ) (7)
predicted state using the measured (or estimated) state xk , ε ∈
R+ is the slack variable, ρ ∈ R+ is the weighting coefficient, so that
umax ∈ Rm is the upper bound of u, and vmax u
∈ Rm is the re-
laxing coefficient [6]. The function l(x, u) is a positive definite U k = MT · Z k , MT = T ⊗ I m . (8)
LI et al.: COMPUTATION OF A MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROLLER AND ITS APPLICATION TO FUEL ECONOMY–ORIENTED ACC
Fig. 1. Illustration of “MB” strategy (take m = 1 as an example).
In (8), ⊗ denotes the Kronecker product and T ∈ R Q×P
is a
so-called “blocking matrix” with Q < P [14]. Matrix T is often
assumed to be fully column ranked and consisted of only ones
and zeros with each row containing exactly one nonzero element.
Recall that only the first entry uk+0|k in Uk will be applied to
the plant, whereas all other entries (i.e., uk+i|k , i = 1, . . . , P −
1) are not used for direct control [6]. Thus, it is not necessary
to calculate the exact value of every entry in Uk except for the
first element uk+0|k . Hence, a blocking matrix (see Fig. 1) can
be formulated as
⎡ ⎤
1 0 0 0
⎢ 0 1q1 ×1 0 0 ⎥ (i.e., compress or squeeze the constraint set). The concept is
T =⎣ ⎦ (9)
0 0 1q2 ×1 0 illustrated in Fig. 2.
0 0 0 1qQ−1 ×1 P ×Q
where 1qj×1 is a qj -dimensional column vector of ones only,
and qj ∈ N + (j = 1, . . . , Q − 1) is the length (i.e., number of
steps) of the (j + 1)th interval, in which the input is hold as
constant, and

Q−1
qj = P − 1.
j=1
In Fig. 1, let Uk∗ ∈ RP m and Zk∗ ∈ RQm denote solutions to
the optimization problem (5) before and after the MB method
(8) being applied, respectively. Consider vector U Z defined as
U Z = MT · Zk∗ ∈ RQm .
We see that U Z is actually a staircase approximation of Uk∗ .
The length (i.e., qj ) of each interval can be different from each
other, i.e., they do not need to be equally distributed. Smaller qj
indicates a more accurate approximation and accordingly less
loss of optimality after the MB transformation. In engineering
practice, we can select small qj ’s for points that are close to the
current step and large qj ’s for those relatively far away.
B. CSC Strategy
Under some circumstances, the computational intensity is
still challenging even after the MB strategy being applied,
as shown in the following real-time simulation in Section V.
One major reason is that the dimensional reduction of ma-
nipulated variables should be not too excessive when using
MB in case of large loss of control optimality. In a plant with
fixed controlling frequency, e.g., ACC, a critical factor for real-
time implementation is the peak CPU time (i.e., the maximum
1201
Fig. 2. Illustration of “CSC” strategy (take m = 1 as an example).
single-step computational time), which must be limited within
an acceptable range (< 100 ms in this paper). However, the
numerical computation of MPC is more likely to take a longer
time when constraints become active. Hence, a more effective
strategy to reduce the computational complexity is to reduce the
number of active constraints.
In addition, it is also not necessary in practice to impose
restrictions on every data point in the prediction horizon, since
only the constraints at the first time step directly affect the
actual control inputs. Hence, constraints at some selected steps
can be deactivated in the prediction horizon to reduce the
dimension of the constraint set, thus benefiting the computa-
tional intensity. This method is referred to as “CSC” strategy
Analogous to (8), a “compression matrix” is formulated to be
⎡ ⎤
1 0 0 0
⎢ 0 π1 0 0 ⎥
Π=⎣ ⎦ (Ω < P ) (12)
0 0 π2 0
0 0 0 πΩ−1 Ω×P
with πj defined as
(10)
πj = [1, 0, . . . , 0] (j = 1, . . . , Ω − 1) (13)
  
ωj
where ωj is the length of interval, in which all the constraints
except those of the first step are deactivated (see Fig. 2), and Ω
(11) is the number of steps, in which the constraints are enabled in
the prediction horizon. Note that Π is a full-row rank matrix.
Define a linear compressing mapping from the original con-
straint set Θ in (6) to a lower dimensional constraint set Φ as

φ(MΠ ) : Θ → Φ
(14)
MΠ = Π ⊗ I m .
A lower dimensional problem can be formulated by applying
the compressing mapping (14) to deactivate some inequality
constraints. In practice, a properly selected compression matrix
Π can significantly reduce the computational intensity (par-
ticularly the maximum single-step computational time) with
negligible effect on the optimality of solutions.
C. Formulation of Fast MPC Algorithm
To construct a fast MPC algorithm, we apply both the MB
and CSC strategies into (5) and (6), yielding
min J = L(Xk , MT · Zk ) + ρε2k (15)
1202 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, JUNE 2015
subject to
 
 An improvement of zero-state constraint is called dual-mode
 MT Z k

Φ = Zk , εk [MΠ −MΠ Vmax ]
u
≤ MΠ Umax . (16)
εk
Matrix MT has a full column rank, and (15) maintains its
original convexity after transformation. The MB transformation
reduces the number of manipulated variables from P m + 1
to Qm + 1, whereas the compressing mapping reduces the
number of inequality constraints from P m to Ωm. Hence,
the overall scale reduction ratio is approximately P 2 /QΩ
(analogous to the gear ratio). Moreover, the MB matrix and
CSC matrix can be independently designed. The MB strategy
is inherently to reduce the dimension of optimized variables.
In the receding horizon optimization, the peak, rather than
average, on-board computing time determines the feasibility of
real-time implementation. In this sense, the MB is less effective
than the CSC strategy. The reason is that the computing time
critically depends on the number of active constraints, which
could be significantly reduced by directly relaxing some of
the constraints in the prediction horizon. Both the MB and
CSC strategies are easy to use for engineers and are relatively
flexible in parameter tuning. Their performance also relies on
the design of the blocking and compression matrices, thereby
presenting customers with some challenges. A trial-and-error
method can be used in practical engineering design to balance
the computational efficiency and other demands, e.g., stability
and optimality.
D. Discussion on Optimality and Stability
The MB and CSC strategies will lead to the loss of optimality
because they actually change the original predictive problem. A
desirable balance between the computational speed and the loss
of optimality can be achieved by properly tuning the MB and
CSC matrices. Another, but more important, topic is the issue
of closed-loop stability after using MB and CSC strategies.
As illustrated in many examples/papers, MPC cannot guaran-
tee the closed-loop stability for finite-horizon cost functions,
particularly for short prediction horizon. Designers often add
additional terms into the cost function and/or constraints to
stabilize the closed-loop system by somehow reformulating
the MPC problems. Key mechanisms to guarantee stability
fall into two categories: 1) extending the prediction horizon;
2) incorporating proper additional conditions, i.e., penalty
and/or terminal constraints [16], [19], [20]. Here, we focus
on the latter case because the former has disadvantages in
computational efficiency.
Using additional conditions to ensure the stability of linear
MPC is often easier than the nonlinear cases. Commonly used
approaches include complementing the cost function with a
zero-state terminal constraint [20], adding a terminal penalty
which is equal to the infinite-horizon cost [21]. Although
there is well-established theory for linear cases, its importance
diminishes because MPC with nonlinearities and constraints is
hardly better than infinite-horizon linear quadratic (LQ) control.
For nonlinear cases, it has been proven in [22] and [23] that the
zero-state terminal constraint guarantees closed-loop stability,
although it might cause some additional computation burden.
method, which replaces the equality constraints by inequalities
for the terminal states [23]. In the dual-mode control, the MPC
switches to a stable linear control, e.g., LQ, once the terminal
states in the prediction horizon enter a suitable neighborhood
of the equilibrium points. This method reduces the possibility
of infeasibility at the expense of frequent switching on the
bounds of the neighborhood. Another stabilizing method is
to use the terminal contractive constraints, which require that
the norm of the terminal states is sufficiently smaller than
that of the initial states in the prediction horizon [24]. The
soft constraint is widely used in practical implementations of
MPC; however, its stability analysis has received relatively little
attention. In [25], MPC with mixed hard and soft constraints
is considered and stability is proven by properly extending the
stability proof in normal MPC. In [26], a soft constrained MPC
approach with guaranteed stability is proposed by enlarging
the terminal constraint and relaxing the state constraints. The
approach can ensure the feasibility in a large region, and the
optimal performance is preserved whenever all state constraints
can be enforced.
In the following, we will show that the zero-state terminal
constraint can stabilize the problem (15) even when the MB and
CSC strategies are applied. To add the terminal constraint, let
xi+1|k = 0, i = P − 1. (17)
The keystone of the proof is to establish the monotonicity
property [24], which will be shown in (22).
Proof of Stability: Define a Lyapunov function for the MPC
problem after using MB and CSC strategies
V ∗ (x∗k , zk∗ , ε∗k , k) = min L(Xk , MT · Zk ) + ρε2k . (18)
zk+i|k,,i=1:Q ,εk
This is the Lyapunov function at the kth step, in which
“∗”denotes that V is calculated from optimized solutions. To
calculate the Lyapunov function for the (k + 1)th step, we can
construct a virtual control sequence as
 ∗
zi+1|k , i = 0, . . . , Q − 2
zi|k+1 =
0, i=Q−1
εk+1 = ε∗k . (19)
It is easy to check that (19) is a feasible solution for the
(k + 1)th step, which satisfies (16). Note that (19) is equivalent
to the case that ui|k+1 = 0 when i = P − qQ−1 : P − 1 by
considering the MB transformation. By using the zero-state
terminal constraint (17), and the fact that the pair (x, u) =
(0, 0) is the exclusive equilibrium point of (1), we have
 ∗
xi+qQ−1 |k , i = 0 : P − qQ−1 − 1
xi|k+1 = . (20)
0, i = P − qQ−1 : P − 1
Then
V ∗ (x∗k , zk∗ , ε∗k , k) = V (xk+1 , zk+1 , εk+1 , k + 1)
qQ−1 −1   −1
 
P
+ l x∗i|k , zi|k
∗
− l(xi|k+1 , zi|k+1 ). (21)
i=0 i=P −qQ−1
LI et al.: COMPUTATION OF A MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROLLER AND ITS APPLICATION TO FUEL ECONOMY–ORIENTED ACC
From (19) and (20), and the fact that l(·, ·) is a positive
definite function with respect to pair (x, u), we have
V ∗ (x∗k , zk∗ , ε∗k , k) ≥ V (xk+1 , zk+1 , εk+1 , k + 1).
Using the optimality property [24], we always have
 
V (xk+1 , zk+1 ,εk+1 ,k+1) ≥ V ∗ x∗k+1 , zk+1
∗
,ε∗k+1 ,k+1 . (23)
Therefore, the defined Lyapunov function monotonically de-
creases when increasing the control step
 
V ∗ (x∗k , zk∗ , ε∗k , k) ≥ V ∗ x∗k+1 , zk+1
∗
, ε∗k+1 , k + 1 . (24)
Hence, the closed-loop stability is ensured (end of proof).
Note that the proof of stability uses the so-called feasibility
property: a feasible control consequence at the (k + 1)th step
is obtained by appending zeros to previous optimal control
sequence. An interesting property is that once the feasibility
property holds, the existence of inequality constraints will
not affect the closed-loop stability. In addition, the proposed
CSC strategy always relaxes inequality constraints, instead
of strengthening them. Therefore, the introduction of CSC
actually does not affect the closed-loop stability when using
zero-state terminal constraint. It should be noted that other
aforementioned approaches can also guarantee closed-loop sta-
bility. In practical applications, however, those approaches are
not always used because they enforce unnecessary constraints
and/or penalty to the original problem. In this case, a posteriori
check of stability via simulations can be used [7], [14]. The
closed-loop stability can be achieved if not using rather worse
blocking and compression matrices.
IV. M ULTIOBJECTIVE -BASED ACC
This section summarizes the design of a MPC-based multiple
objective ACC system, with special interest in reducing fuel
consumption, which is expected to have a large penetration into
the markets in the near future. It should be noted that the term
“multiple objective” is not used in the sense of optimization, but
for engineering practices. It means that several goals are consid-
ered in the ACC design, such as good fuel economy, necessary
tracking capability, satisfactory driver feelings, and rear-end
safety. However, to reduce acceleration alone is not sufficient
in the design of ACC algorithms. The smoothing acceleration
could improve fuel economy; however, it also weakens the
tracking capability and enlarges the range error. Moreover,
drivers are essential to evaluate the efficacy any ACC system;
ACC will be completely useless if drivers choose not to use
(e.g., due to undesirable ride comfort) no matter how it works in
fuel economy and tracking capability. Therefore, it is critical to
systematically consider multiple objectives, i.e., fuel economy,
tracking capability, and driver feelings, instead of focusing on a
single one. The hierarchical control structure is shown in Fig. 3.
The upper level controller, synthesized by the MPC theory, aims
to reduce fuel consumption while comprehensively balancing
other two objectives, i.e., tracking capability and driver feel-
ings. Other demands, e.g., ride comfort, rear-end safety, and
physical limits of the vehicle, are formulated as constraints. The
selection of MPC mainly attributes to its special capability in
achieving optimal control while directly handling various input
1203
(22)
Fig. 3. Hierarchical control architecture, consisting of an upper layer con-
troller and a lower layer controller.
and state constraints. The lower level controller is used to deal
with nonlinearities of vehicle dynamics and errors in modeling.
Interested readers can refer to [5] and [27] for more details. The
emphasis in this paper is to implement the MPC-based upper
lever controller in a real-time manner.
A. Continuous-Time Model for Controller Design
The vehicle to be controlled is a passenger car with 2.0-L
gasoline engine, five-speed automatic transmission and hy-
draulic braking system. Its longitudinal dynamics includes
static nonlinearity of the engine, discontinuous gear ratio, and
quadratic aerodynamic drag. These nonlinearities are compen-
sated by using an inverse model in the lower level controller by
neglecting the powertrain dynamics. In addition, a switching
logic with hysteresis is built to avoid simultaneous actions of
driving and braking. The outputs of the lower level controller
are the acceleration pedal position aaccl and the brake pressure
Pbrk . A proportional–integral (PI)-type feedback controller
is incorporated to track the desired acceleration af des . The
combination of vehicle longitudinal dynamics, inverse model,
and PI-type controller is approximated as a first-order transfer
function, with a gain KL and a time constant TL . This transfer
function, together with intervehicle dynamics, is viewed as the
controlled plant for the upper level controller. Its state-space
model is formulated to be [5], [27]
ẋ = A(vf ) · x + B · u + G · ξ
x = [⎡Δd Δv af ]T , u = af des , ξ = a⎤
p
0 1 −τh − r(2vf − vMean )
A = ⎣0 0 −1 ⎦
⎡0 0 ⎤ −1/T
⎡ L⎤
0 0
B = ⎣ 0 ⎦, G = ⎣1⎦ (25)
KL /TL 0
where [Δd, Δv, af ]T is the system state (distance error, relative
speed, and longitudinal acceleration); af des is the control input
(the desired acceleration); ap is the measurable disturbance
(the acceleration of the preceding vehicle); vf is the vehicle
speed; and τh , r, and vMean are the parameters of the quadratic
headway policy, representing the headway time, quadratic co-
efficient, and average speed, respectively. Notice that (25) is
quasi-linear. The sampling rate if 10 Hz is used to linearize (25)
(i.e., sampling time Ts = 100 ms).
1204 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, JUNE 2015
B. Formulation of MPC Optimization Problem
The upper level controller is formulated into a MPC problem
by synthesizing multiple performance indexes such as fuel con-
sumption, tracking capability, and driver feeling, as well as in-
equality constraints to reflect ride comfort, rear-end safety, and
physical limitation [5]. The formulation of cost function and
constraints needs to achieve the following goals: 1) zero steady-
state tracking errors; 2) in accelerating cases, the intervehicle
states should be controlled within the permissible tracking
range to avoid frequent cut-ins from adjacent lanes; 3) in brak-
ing cases, a rear-end collision must be avoided; 4) to depress
acceleration to lower fuel consumption; and 5) The desired
responses or dynamics should satisfy driver desired distance
feature, driver longitudinal ride comfort, and driver desired
dynamic characteristics. The cost function (based on quadratic
norm) in the predictive horizon k · Ts < t < (k + P ) · Ts is
 )·T s
(k+P
J= L(Δd, Δv, af , af des , jf des )dt
k·T s
L = wyΔd Δd 2 + wyΔv Δv 2
+ wu af des 2 + wdu jf des 2
+ wya af R − af 2 (26)
where Ts = 100 ms is the sampling time, k · Ts is the
current time, P · Ts is the prediction length, and af R is the
reference acceleration from a microscopic car-following model
for average human drivers (with coefficients formulated as
functions of vehicle speed vf ). The constraints in the predictive
horizon k · Ts < t < (k + P ) · Ts are
a ≤a ≤a
f min f des f max
jf min ≤ jf des ≤ jf max (27)
 af min ≤ af ≤ af max
Δdmin ≤ Δd ≤ Δdmax
(28)
Δvmin ≤ Δv ≤ Δvmax
d ≥ dsafe , dsafe = max{TTC · Δv, ds0 }. (29)
In aforementioned equations, af min , af max , jf min , and
jf max are bounds of longitudinal acceleration and jerk; dsafe
is the distance safety threshold; Δdmin , Δdmax , Δvmin , and
Δvmax are the bounds of tracking errors; and TTC is shorted
from “time-to-collision”, which is used to restrain the mini-
mum distance to maintain a safe intervehicle clearance. The
constraints on acceleration and jerk are used to meet the driver
ride comfort demand. In naturalistic driver experiments, vehicle
cut-ins and driver interventions are less likely to occur if the
tracking errors are bounded, thereby smoothing the tracking
process and helping to reduce the fuel consumption [5]. The
turning of weighting coefficients wyΔd , wyΔv , wu , wya , and
wdu in (26) affects the performance of MPC controllers, in
particular on how to balance different objectives. As shown in
Table II, wya is intentionally selected to be large to increase
the penalty on vehicle acceleration, and wyΔd and wyΔv are
selected to be small to relax the limitation on tracking errors.
Nevertheless, the relaxation on tracking errors is not unlimited,
but confined by (28) to satisfy driver expected range. This
choice is useful to depress the acceleration level, thus helping
improving fuel consumption of ACC vehicle.
C. Constraint Softening to Address Computing Infeasibility
A key issue with above-designed MPC is the potential “com-
puting infeasibility” in numerical optimization because some of
the strict constraints on inputs and states can never be satisfied
(they are referred to as hard constraints).
The bounds of hard constraints are not allowed to be violated,
but the tracking errors in ACC sometimes unavoidably reach
their bounds in highly dynamic traffic scenarios. To avoid the
saturation of tracking errors, a natural decision is to strengthen
the acceleration or deceleration. This is often impossible in real-
ity because the control input is often located in its upper bound
in an accelerating scenario, leaving no space to be strengthened.
The same is true for a braking scenario. Consequently, the states
keep increasing or decreasing along original directions because
of vehicle body inertia. Once any bound saturation occurs, the
optimization problem becomes infeasible.
The constraint softening method in [6] is used to relax some
hard constraints. Add a slack variable to (26), yielding a new
cost function
Ψ = J + ρ · ε2 (ε ≥ 0) (30)
where ρ is the weighting coefficient. The constraints (27) and
(28) are transformed into soft constraints as
⎧
⎪ a
af
+ ε · vmin
af
≤ af des ≤ af max + ε · vmax
⎪
⎨ f min
af af
af min + ε · vmin ≤ af ≤ af max + ε · vmax
(31)
⎪
⎪ Δdmin + ε · vminΔd
≤ Δd ≤ Δdmax + ε · vmax Δd
⎩
Δvmin + ε · vmin ≤ Δv ≤ Δvmax + ε · vmax
Δv Δv
#
where vmin #
and vmax are the relaxation coefficients with the
subscript number representing parameters such as Δd and Δv.
A new optimization problem is formulated to be
min Ψ(t), t ∈ [k · T s, (k + P ) · T s]
u(t)
subject to
(a) car-following model : (25)
(b) soft constraints : (31)
(c) hard constraints : (29). (32)
In Problem (32), the slack variable ε will become positive if
the hard constraints (27) and (28) cannot be satisfied. In this
case, hard constraints (27) and (28) will be replaced with the
soft constraints (31), in which the bounds are extended to guar-
antee feasible solutions. This implies the violation of original
hard constraints. However, the violation is not completely free
and the violation degree is limited by penalizing ε in the cost
function, so that a balance between constraint violation and
control optimality is expected. When all hard constraints hold,
the slack variable ε becomes zero and Problem (32) can be
reduced to original problem without any softening constraints.
In addition, it must be pointed out that the hard constraint
for safety [i.e., (29)] is not softened here because any rear-
end collision should be avoided in the car-following process.
Due to the demand on fuel economy, vehicle acceleration is
both constrained and penalized in the performance index. This
design might cause potential risk of rear-end collision in highly
dynamic traffic conditions. Note that (29) requires that the
LI et al.: COMPUTATION OF A MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROLLER AND ITS APPLICATION TO FUEL ECONOMY–ORIENTED ACC 1205

TABLE I
T HREE MPC A LGORITHMS I NVOLVED IN R EAL -T IME S IMULATION

TABLE II
K EY PARAMETERS FOR THE MPC-BASED U PPER L EVEL C ONTROLLER

TABLE III
K EY PARAMETERS FOR THE MB AND CSC S TRATEGIES

minimum intervehicle distance must be greater than the safety

threshold dsafe during the entire prediction horizon. When a
rear-end collision risk emerges, the intervehicle distance rapidly
reduces because of the high-speed difference between the front
and following vehicles. In order to satisfy (29) in the prediction
horizon, the optimization of Problem (32) will automatically
relax soft constraints (31), including the lower bound of acceler-
ation, by increasing the slack variable. Consequently, the MPC
will strengthen the deceleration by applying more braking force
to avoid potential rear-end collision. This balancing mecha-
nism helps to reduce the risk of rear-end collisions caused
by restraining the vehicle acceleration for high fuel economy
considerations.

V. R EAL -T IME S IMULATION OF FAST MPC-BASED ACC

Three MPC algorithms are investigated through real-time
simulation for performance evaluation. As shown in Table I,
algorithm A (the baseline) has no scale reduction strategy;
algorithm B includes only the MB strategy; and algorithm
C includes both the MB and CSC strategies. The simulation
platform is constructed based on an industrial computer with
2.4-GHz CPU and 512-MB memory, whereas the software is
designed based on the MATLAB/xPC toolbox. The MPC algo-
rithms are implemented as S-functions with codes programmed
in C/C++ for fast computation. All the numerical optimization
problems in the MPC are solved by using the Dantzig–Wolfe
optimization method [18]. Some key parameters for the MPC-
based upper level controller are given in Tables II and III. The
scale reduction ratios for MB and CSC are around 50/12 (P/Q)
and 50/26 (P/Ω), respectively.
Fig. 4. Simulation results of three MPC algorithms. (a) Acceleration.
(b) Relative speed. (c) Distance error. (d) Slack variable.
A. Case 1: Constant Accelerating Scenario
The leading vehicle runs first at 15 m/s and starts accelerating
5 s at the deceleration of −2 m/s2 until to the speed 1 m/s. The
ACC car is controlled to achieve fuel economy-oriented ACC.
Simulation results of the control input (af des ), relative speed
(Δv), distance error (Δd), and slack variable (ε) are given in
Fig. 4. The x-marked line, solid line, and dashed line represent
algorithm A, B, and C, respectively. The dotted line represents
original upper/lower bounds (i.e., hard constraints). The three
1206 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, JUNE 2015

Fig. 5. Computational efficiency of three MPC algorithms. (a) Computational

time at each time step. (b) Peak and mean computing time.

TABLE IV
C OMPARISON OF C OMPUTATIONAL E FFICIENCY

algorithms yield extremely close outputs, indicating quite simi-

lar performance on the optimality of the solutions. Note that the
xPC kernel also consumes some CPU time to support the code
execution. It is compensated for by running a prosimulation
without any MPC algorithm.
Fig. 5 compares the computational efficiency of these three
algorithms: 1) computational time et each time step; and 2) peak
and mean computing time. Table IV summarizes overall com-
putational performance. The critical factor of the MPC-based
ACC is the peak CPU time because the MPC algorithm must be
successfully executed during a fixed time step (Ts = 100 ms).
With a 50/12 (≈4.2) scale reduction ratio in MB, the peak CPU
time is reduced to 53% of that of the baseline algorithm. The Fig. 6. Computing errors between three MPC algorithms. (a) Error of control
proposed CSC strategy further cuts the peak CPU time by 65% input. (b) Error of relative speed. (c) Error of distance error. (d) Error of slack
variable.
with only a 50/26 (≈1.9) scale reduction ratio (relative to B).
Hence, the CSC method is more effective in improving the
comutational speed, thereby enabling real-time implementation the nominal values in Fig. 4, these absolute errors are quite
of MPC. small. Notice that the CSC strategy somewhat affects the pre-
The solution generated by algorithm A is considered to be cision of slack variable ε (with a relative error around 1%),
optimal since no scale reduction is used. Compared with algo- but with very limited effect on optimal solutions. Therefore,
rithm A (baseline), the relative input/state errors of algorithm B it can be concluded that the proposed fast MPC algorithm
and C are given in Fig. 6. For algorithm B and C, the absolute (by integrating the MB and CSC strategies) can improve the
errors of af des , Δv, and Δd are less than 0.5 × 10−2 m/s2 , computational speed significantly with negligible effect on the
0.5 × 10−2 m/s and 1 × 10−2 m, respectively. Compared with optimality of MPC solutions.
LI et al.: COMPUTATION OF A MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROLLER AND ITS APPLICATION TO FUEL ECONOMY–ORIENTED ACC 1207

Fig. 7. Speed profiles from naturalistic traffic flow. Fig. 9. Distribution of Δv and its computation errors. (a) Relative speed.
(b) Computation errors.

Fig. 8. Computational efficiency of three MPC algorithms. (a) Average. Fig. 10. Distribution of Δd and its computation errors. (a) Distance error.
(b) Maximum. (b) Computation errors.

B. Case 2: Naturalistic Traffic Flow Scenario TABLE V

C OMPARISON OF L OSS OF O PTIMALITY
The effectiveness of the proposed fast MPC algorithm is also
tested in the naturalistic traffic flow scenarios. The purpose is
to evaluate the effect of the MB and CSC strategies on the
control optimality in a comprehensive manner. The control
optimality is measured by the errors of inputs or states in
algorithm B (MB) and C (MB+CSC) compared with algorithm
A (baseline). Fig. 7 presents the speed profiles of the leading
vehicle in naturalistic traffic flow tests. The profiles are acquired
from driver test data in and around Beijing, including both city
road (the fourth ring road) and highway (the JingJun highway)
tests. The speed profiles of four drivers are used with time
length around 55, 27, 50, and 57 min, respectively (totally in less than 0.03% relative speed error and less than 0.04%
around 3 h). distance error. Algorithm C achieves less than 0.08% relative
Fig. 8 presents the computing times of three MPC algo- speed error and less than 0.048% distance error. Therefore, the
rithms. The MB strategy reduces the average computing time MB and CSC strategies have negligible effect (with less than
by 45.1% and the additional use of CSC further reduces the 0.1% in errors) on the control optimality in the representative
average time by 34.6% (totally by 79.7%). For the maximum naturalistic traffic flow tests. It is summarized that the proposed
computation time (i.e., the peak time), the MB strategy reduces fast MPC could maintain the desired control optimality in
the value by 43.5%, and the additional use of CSC further different driving scenarios.
reduces the value by 46.8% (totally by 90.3%). Hence, the
proposed CSC strategy is more effective in reducing the peak
VI. F IELD E XPERIMENTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
time, which is also more critical for real-time implementations.
This accords with our analysis on the pros and cons of CSC The fast MPC algorithm proposed in Section III is further
and MB. evaluated through field tests. As shown in Fig. 11, the ex-
Fig. 9 shows the distribution of Δv in algorithm A and perimental platform is built based on a passenger car with
the computation errors in algorithm B/C; Fig. 10 shows the identical parameters as before. The millimeter wavelength radar
distribution of Δd in algorithm A and the computation errors in is equipped to detect frontal moving or static targets, and two
algorithm B/C. Table V summarizes their standard deviations actuators, including an electronic throttle and electronic vac-
(both states and their computation errors) as the comparison uum booster, are used to track desired engine torque commands
index to evaluate the loss of optimality. Algorithm B results and braking force.
1208 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 3, JUNE 2015
Fig. 11. Configuration of experimental platform.
Fig. 12. Intervehicle and vehicle state, including acceleration, relative speed,
distance error, and slack variable.
The xPC controller is identical in setup to the one used in
real-time simulation. In field tests, aside from executing the
MPC algorithm (with “MB+CSC” strategy), it also fulfills other
functions including radar signals processing, target vehicle
selection, lower level controller, inverse vehicle model calcula-
tion, throttle/brake switching logic, and controller area network
(CAN) communication. They are built by MATLAB/Simulink
as separated functional modules.
A typical accelerating scenario was experimentally studied in
order to systematically test predefined multiple objectives, e.g.,
fuel economy, tracking capability, and driver feeling, which
also outputted the overall computing time of xPC controller at
each time step. Fig. 12 shows the real acceleration (af ), the
relative speed (Δv), the distance error (Δd), and the slack
variable (ε). Fig. 13 shows the accelerator position, engine
speed, gear position, and fuel injection rate. The computing
time as each time step is given in Fig. 14.
In this scenario, the preceding vehicle accelerates at 0.6 m/s2 ,
which exceeds the boundary af max (0.5 m/s2 ) in the con-
Fig. 13. Powertrain state of ACC vehicle, including acceleration pedal angle,
engine speed in revolution per minute, gear range, and engine fuel rate.
Fig. 14. Computing time of fast MPC controller in each step.
straints. To satisfy driver feeling, the ACC limits af des and
af within an acceptable range (around af max ) while enlarging
the slack variable to avoid infeasible solutions. The computing
time, which critically relies on active constraints in the pre-
diction horizon, does not exceed 40 ms in the whole process.
Therefore, the proposed fast MPC algorithm could satisfy the
computational speed requirement. It should be pointed out that
algorithm A and algorithm B might not satisfy the 100-ms
time requirement for single-step calculation, which is not ex-
perimentally involved in field tests due to safety concern.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper has presented an effective scale reduction frame-
work for computationally intensive MPC controllers to enable
their real-time implementation in engineering practice, and also
evaluates its effectiveness based on a fuel economy-oriented ve-
hicular ACC system. The “MB” strategy, which aims to reduce
the number of manipulated variables; and the proposed “CSC”
strategy, which aims to squeeze the constraint set by relaxing
some of the inequality constraints in the prediction horizon,
are used to improve the computational efficiency. Satisfying
the tradeoff between control optimality and the computational
speed can be achieved by properly designing the blocking and
compression matrices.
LI et al.: COMPUTATION OF A MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROLLER AND ITS APPLICATION TO FUEL ECONOMY–ORIENTED ACC
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Shengbo Eben Li received the M.S. and Ph.D. de-
grees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in
2006 and 2009, respectively.
He is an Assistant Professor with the Department
of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University.
His active research interests include nonlinear opti-
mal control, autonomous vehicle control, and lithium
ion battery management. He is the author of more
than 60 journal/conference papers and the coinventor
of more than ten patents.
Dr. Li received the Award for Science and Tech-
nology of China ITS Association (2012), Award for Technological Invention
in Ministry of Education (2012), National Award for Technological Invention
in China (2013), and Honored Funding for Beijing Excellent Youth Researcher
(2013).
Zhenzhong Jia received the B.E. degree in mea-
surement, control technology, and instruments and
the M.E. degree in mechanical engineering from
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2005 and
2007, respectively, and the M.S. degree in mechani-
cal engineering, the M.S. degree in mathematics, and
the Ph.D. degree in naval architecture and marine
engineering, from the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI, USA, in 2009 and 2014, respectively.
His research interests are in the field of robotics,
controls, and hybrid power systems.
Keqiang Li received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, in
1988 and 1995, respectively, and the B.Tech. degree
from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1985.
He is Professor of automotive engineering with
Tsinghua University. His main areas of research in-
terest include vehicle dynamics and control for driver
assistance systems and hybrid electrical vehicle. He
has authored over 90 papers and holds 12 patents in
China and Japan.
Dr. Li has been a Senior Member of the Society
of Automotive Engineers of China, and on the editorial boards of International
Journal of ITS Research and International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Sys-
tems. He has been a recipient of the “Changjiang Scholar Program Professor.”
Bo Cheng received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1985 and
1988, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Tokyo
University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1998.
He is a Professor with Tsinghua University and the
Dean with the Suzhou Automotive Research Insti-
tute, Tsinghua University. His active research inter-
ests include autonomous vehicles, driver assistance
systems, active safety, and vehicular ergonomics. He
is the author of more than 70 journal/conference
papers and holds more than 20 patents. He also is
Chairman of the Academic Board of SAE-Beijing, Committee Member of
National 863 Plan, Member of Academic Committee of China Transportation
Technology Project, and Member of Academic Committee of Ministry of
Public Security Traffic Management.