This paper presents a novel multi-objective coordinated adaptive cruise control (ACC) algorithm based on a model predictive control (MPC) framework which can comprehensively address issues regarding longitudinal car-following performance, lateral stability, as well as vehicle safety. During the car-following, vehicle dynamics, illustrating the forces acting on the tire contact patches, are established. To simplify the tightly coupled dynamics system, a state-feedback based disturbance decoupling method is employed, by which longitudinal and lateral dynamics can be completely decoupled. Furthermore, the traditional MPC control with a constant weight matrix will probably not be able to solve time-varying multi-objective coordinated optimization issues, especially in transient scenarios. A weight coefficient self-tuning strategy is therefore suggested by which the weight coefficient for each sub-objective can be adjusted automatically with the change of traffic scenarios, accordingly improving the overall car-following performance. The simulations show that the control algorithm utilizing the suggested self-tuning strategy reaps significant benefits in terms of longitudinal car-following performance, while at the same time maintaining a small lateral stability error range.

In special locations (scenes) such as campuses and closed parks, small unmanned vehicles have gained more attention and application. Autonomous navigation is one of the key technologies of low-speed small unmanned vehicles. It has become a research hotspot, but there are still many problems, such as perception sensitivity, navigation, and positioning accuracy, motion planning accuracy, and tracking control accuracy. In order to sort out the research status of the key technologies of autonomous navigation for small unmanned vehicles more clearly, this paper firstly reviews the key technologies of autonomous navigation and presents an analysis and summary. Finally, future research trends of small unmanned vehicles with low speed are given.