Speed Control in the Presence of Road Obstacles: A Comparison of Model Predictive Control and Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

The paper compares two optimal control methods — Reinforcement Learning and Model Predictive Control — for adaptive speed control in the presence of road obstacles to enhance ride comfort. Both methods use a model for training or prediction and a reward or cost function to achieve a desired control objective. Using the same quarter-car model and objective function for both methods, differences in planned speed profiles, optimality of the control objective, and differences in computational time are analysed through simulations over a series of cosine-shaped road bumps.