Optimal controls of fleet trajectories for fuel and emissions

Increased demand for transport, coupled with energy, climate and environmental concerns, has put more and more pressure for improved performance on traffic systems. The recent development in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication provides an effective means for continuous management of vehicle driving. This study presents an essential step of the work towards a dynamic fleet management system that takes advantages of real-time traffic information and communication. Based on the optimal control theory, a methodological approach is developed to control the environmental impacts of live vehicle fleets. In particular, vehicle trajectories that minimize local environmental objectives are derived by applying a discrete dynamic programming method. Numerical examples show that the method is promising for local V2I based traffic management applications and can be further extended for more complex optimal control problems in dynamic fleet management.