Improving fuel economy of heavy-duty vehicles in daily driving

In this work, we integrate two once separate concepts for longitudinal control of heavy duty vehicles: responding to elevation changes to improve fuel economy using preview and reacting to the motion of preceding vehicles using feedback. The two concepts are unified to provide a safe yet fuel efficient connected and automated technology for heavy duty vehicles. First, we establish an integrated control framework of the two concepts based on barrier function theory and then we discuss the detailed control design of each concept. Finally, we demonstrate the benefits of the proposed design against a naive switching controller by experimentally evaluating the performance of a connected automated truck.