International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 3, Issue 5, August 2014

CONTROL SYSTEM MECHANISM IMPLEMENTATION

OF AUTOMATED DRIVING CRUISE CONTROLLER
Bharat Oberoi
Student (B.Tech V sem) Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon-123506, India
Rijul Prakash
Student (B.Tech V sem) Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon-123506, India
Rajat Aggarwal
Student (B.Tech V sem) Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon-123506, India
Ravi Ahuja
Student (B.Tech VII sem) Department of Electronics and Computers Engineering
Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon-123506, India

ABSTRACT
4. U = input control signal
5. Feedback = mapping from outputs to inputs

Our paper reviews about constructing or designing a

cruise controller that runs on a constant reference speed
which is being provided early to the car. This is a step in
the field of making autonomous car possible in reality.
The whole phenomenon is done using basic control
equations and control theory without any use of
microcontroller and programming algorithms. In this
way, we have come up with Bang-bang control, then Pregulator, then PI regulator and finally the PID regulator
which is good enough to fulfill our objectives of
stability, tracking and robustness.
Keywords:
controller.

cruise

controller,

P-regulator,

The basic block diagram of a control system

using these building blocks can be as follows:

PID

1. INTRODUCTION
From the past few decades, the concept of autonomous
cars or driverless cars is growing at a very fast pace. The
field of robotics and artificial intelligence has already
been able to construct a robot that is able to walk and
navigate its way in a completely different arena every
time and that also without any external instructions.
Various sensors and microcontrollers are used in this
area. Now scientists are trying to develop mathematical
equations to execute it. The combination of these
mathematical equations along with some input and
output is known as control theory [1]. The various
building blocks of a control system are:
1. X = present state of the system.
2. R(reference) = what we want the system to do
3. Y= output of the operation

Now our objective is to make a cruise controller that

runs automatically, i.e. without anyone on the driving
seat. Also the cruise will be maintained to run at a
constant speed without any microcontroller or embedded
devices but using just a few mathematical operations of
control theory. The basic properties our cruise controller
will take care of can be:
1. Tracking
2. Stability
3. Robustness
4. Disturbance rejection

2. STABILITY
The basic property that our cruise controller should
posses is tracking. The term tracking justifies that the
cruise controller should move at a desired speed,

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 5, August 2014

precisely known as reference speed (r). Now according

to Newtons second law:
F=ma
Now our initial state is default velocity that our car is
moving, i.e. x.
Further our input would be either gas or brake (u) whose
force can be calculated by equation,
F=cu
Where c=electromechanical transmission coefficient.
Now applying simple dynamics

[3]. But our second objective is to attain

stability.

Fig. 2: Output of the bang-bang control

Now applying the same principle we are going to design
a cruise controller that runs at our desired speed. Lets
assume that we already know the initial velocity of our
car i.e. x and y=x if y is the output of the control system
[2]. The error coefficient is the above equation is
denoted by e and our objective is to make that e equals
zero where
E=r-x
To execute this we can have a simple set of equations
such that,
umax if e>0
u= -umax if e<0
0 if e=0

Now the above graph shows the relation

between final velocity and time, which is pretty
much to our requirements. It slowly gears up to
the required velocity i.e. 70, and then becomes
stable. But on the other hand, the other graph
that shows the relation between the input signal
and time is not so stable. This means our cruise
controller will shift from gas to brake and again
brake to gas at every unit of time that results in
the car to move backwards forwards rigorously

Fig. 2: Output of the bang-bang control

3. P-Regulator
Now the problem with the above design of a cruise
controller is that the controller over-reacts to small
errors. Therefore we should design a controller that
should be stable. In order to do that we can look for
another equation of a control theory i.e.:
U=ke
for some positive value of k
e is the error, positive error means we are going really
slow and e should be positive,
negative error means we are going really fast and e
should be negative.
Now this yield to nice and stable design of our controller
where small error yields smaller control signals that
means the controller does not over react to small errors.
Now this design is known as P-Regulator where p stands
of proportional and the input signal u is directly
proportional to the error through k.

Fig. 3: Output of the P-regulator

Now this graph shows that our controller is nice and
smooth and of course stable with no fluctuations. Now

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 5, August 2014

there is a little problem here. The upper limit of the final

speed reached up to 60 but we have wants our controller
to hit to a speed of 70. So even though we are moving
smoothly we have not reached to the required limit.
Hence we do not follow our objective of tracking.
Now the main problem which can be the reason for our
controller not achieving the desired speed could be wind
resistance. When our car is going really fast, the wind
will flow in the reverse direction and caused our car to
move slowly than the real speed [4]. Therefore to solve
this, we add the value of the wind resistance to above
control equation as:

where

is the wind resistance.

Now, there is one more equation to be added to it. We

know at steady state x is not changing. In other words at
steady state the initial velocity becomes constant or the
derivative of x becomes zero.
and
u = k(r-x)
Putting in all the values and equation to zero we get,
Which means,

error part and add it to our equation. Now the simplest

way of collect the error over time is to integrate it.
Now the equation looks like to be this,

Where kp is the proportional coefficient and kI is the

integral coefficient [6]. Now the final equation after
applying the missing derivative part would be:

This whole system is known as PID regulator.

4. CONCLUSION
Now our main objective is to design a cruise controller
that can move at our provided reference speed
automatically without any human interaction. We have
done it with the help of control theory and control
equations rather than using any microcontroller and
programming algorithms. We have used the p-regulator,
then a PI regulator and finally the PID regulator which at
last fulfill our objectives. The final simulation of the
above equation of PID regulator is as shown below. This
shows that it is smooth and stable without any
fluctuations, it follows tracking with an output speed of
exact 70 and it follows robustness as the speed does not
depends on any physical factors.

This is the main problem where the speed is always less

than the reference speed.
To solve this problem, we are going to add the effect of
wind resistance to the above equation as:
We have done this because of the following reasons
Now this is what we actually want from the cruise
controller, that it has stability and it has tracking but it
does not have robustness. The property of robustness
implies that the equation of our controller does not
depend on the physical parameters that need to be
changed while driving [5]. But in the above equation, m,
c and gamma are the physical parameters that our speed
explicitly depends upon. So we have got to do another
attempt. This time lets look at the p-regulator one more
time.
This graph shows that at the initial stage the controller
push the gas pedal until the speed reaches just below the
reference speed. After that the controller becomes stable
and cant push more against the wind resistance. So in
order to reach the reference speed we need to collect the

REFERENCES
1. "PID process control, a "Cruise Control" example".
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automatically steered bodies". J. Amer. Soc. Naval
Eng. 34 (2):280309. doi:10.1111/j.1559-3584.1922.
tb04958.x.

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 3, Issue 5, August 2014

3. Liptak, Bela (1995). Instrument Engineers'

Handbook:Process Control. Radnor, Pennsylvania:
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