Using improved chaotic ant swarm to tune PID controller on cooperative adaptive cruise control

In the study of introducing PID controller into Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system, there still exist some problems, such as driving comfort and fuel consumption problems. Also, not making rational use of intelligent algorithm to tune PID controller cannot be overlooked. Hence, this paper presents a way to tune PID controller using improved chaotic ant swarm (CAS) to achieve the goal of improving driving comfort, fuel consumption and reducing the minimum safe distance. CACC controller, composed of PID controller and safety distance model, is erected with joint simulation of PRESCAN and MATLAB/Simulink. This paper presents experiments carried out on vehicle queues at low and high cruising speeds under various kinds of working conditions, including platoon driving, cut-in, cut-out vehicle queue and so on. Additionally, the experiments were conducted, respectively, before and after setting the PID controller. Results based on the data analysis of velocity, acceleration, the scale of throttle and brake power, wheel vertical displacement and longitudinal spacing between the vehicles demonstrate that this paper improved driving comfort at the same time decreased the minimum safety distance and fuel economy.