2015 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

Cruise Control Design Using Fuzzy Logic

Controller
Hassan Asere∗ , Chengwei Lei† , Ruting Jia∗
∗ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, California State University Northridge
Northridge, California, USA
Email:hassan.asere.638@my.csun.edu, ruting.jia@csun.edu
† Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
McNeese State University
Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA
Email:clei@mcneese.edu

Abstract—In todays automobile industry, the cruise control
is one of the most critical aspects that require a well-designed
controller that can accommodate the new development in technol-
ogy. In this paper, we have designed a cruise controller using the
Fuzzy logic rules and a developed MATLAB code to simulate the
car’s engine mechanism. Fuzzy logic has expanded substantially
in the field of nonlinear systems as it provides a very simplified
approach to design controllers that can provide an optimum
results. Hence, this paper will present a fuzzy controller that can
be used to study the performance between the conventional PID
controller and fuzzy controller and provide a platform that can
help to identify whether fuzzy logic will help to maximize the
performance or there might be rooms for improvement to reach
the targeted results.
Keywords—Cruise control ; Fuzzy logic ; Nonlinear control
I. I NTRODUCTION
The cruise control objective is to regulate the speed of
the vehicle based on the desired speed. The speed will be
measured using speed sensor, then the error and the change
of the error will be calculated in order to adjust the speed.
Adjusting the speed is to control the throttle position which is
proportionally related to the fuel injection to the engine. This
will provide the driving force that will move the car according
to the Newton”s law of motion.
With the uncertainty and complexity, Fuzzy control is
being able to provide a method that wouldn’t need a detailed
mathematical algorithms to base on, it is basically based on the
experience and the logic behind the process itself with a simple
understanding to the dynamics it contained. In this project, we
use the Mamdani model, the most commonly method used due
to its simplicity and coherency. For consistency, we begin the
paper with the mathematical modeling followed by a detailed
explanation of the Fuzzy logic design and approach and finally
a bried about he MATLAB simulink design and simulation
with the results.
This paper will provide an insight and comparison between
the controller’s performance of a normal linear PID controller
and a Fuzzy controller that has two inputs and one output.
The strategy we implement is to perform the test using three
different loads, 1000, 2200 and 3000 kg which considers the
car’s mass. Significant results have been noticed with the
Fuzzy controller in term of controller’s specifications. There
is still room for improvement that will be shared in this paper.
II. M ATHEMATICAL M ODELING
To represent the physics and dynamics of the system, we
will start with the Newton’s 2nd law of motion which is stated
as follow:

F =m×a (1)
where F represents the total force, m is the body mass and
finally a which is the acceleration. This equation will be
expanded to represents the dynamics of the car as well as
the disturbances.
Since we are concerned with the velocity to be calculated,
then we will replace the acceleration in eq. (1) with the rate
of change of velocity v which is the acceleration a. Then eq.
(1) will become as follow:
 dv
F =m× . (2)
dt
Below is a figure that can describe the major dynamics of the
car based on the Newton’s motion’s law. Now F which is the
Fig. 1: This is just a simple description of how the dynamics
of the car representation looks like
total force, will have many components that need to be mod-
eled in details to emulate the system, therefore, we will divide
the force into two parts, the engine force and disturbance. Both
will be modeled in the following subsections.

978-1-4799-8697-2/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 2210

DOI 10.1109/SMC.2015.386
A. Engine Force III. F UZZY L OGIC D ESIGN A PPROACH
Engine force will be created by burning the proper amount It is the most challenging part as it requires a knowledge
of fuel that injected in it which will create the energy to as well as experience in order to come up with the appropriate
move the car. Here, this mechanism will be represented as number of membership functions, getting the right inputs and
the torque in the following equations: outputs, generating the rules and adjusting the ranges with the
  2  each membership function.
αn v In this project, since we are designing a controller that
T (αn v) = Tm 1 − β −1 (3)
ωm controls the speed of a vehicle, we will need to have two
inputs, the error and the rate of change of the error. The two
and engine angular speed that will obtain the torque is related
inputs have the same number of membership functions, which
proportionally to the velocity ω = αn v. Where T is the toque,
are five, as after many experimental trials we found that it gives
Tm is the maximum torque, αn is th gear to the wheel radius
the best results and performance. Neither 7 nor 3 membership
ratio and the ωm is the engine angular maximum speed and
functions had shown a better performance than 5 during the
β is a torque coefficient. Below is the typical values for some
testing.
of the constants, also the values for some of the parameters
The output will be only one output that controls the throttle
used in this project for simulation purposes
position in order to control the amount of fuel injection into
Tm = 190 N.m the engine and thus controlling the speed of the vehicle. The
ωm = 420 rad/s output will also have five membership functions ranges from
αn = 25 0 → 1.
β = 0.4 .
Now the driving force can become to the following equation A. Inputs Membership Functions
We will start with the fuzzy inputs. As mentioned earlier
Fe = αn uT (αn v) (4) that we have two inputs, error and rate of the change of the
where u is the control signal which control the throttle position error, each has five membership functions. The five member-
proportionally related to the fuel injection rate. The value of ship functions consist of three triangles and two trapezoids.
the control signal is limited between 0 to 1, 0 means the For a better low errors and optimum results, the range for the
minimum speed and 1 the maximum speed. error is set to be between -0.5 → 0.5.
For the rate of the change of error, the range is set to be
B. Disturbance Forces
between -1 → 1. The linguistic variables for both is denoted
The disturbance forces that will reduce the car’s speed as follow: LN , SN , ZR, SP and LP [1]
consists of three major components, the aerodynamics drag,
rolling road friction and gravitational force due to road slope.
In this project, we consider the first two forces to build the
fuzzy controller design and expand on that to include the
gravitational force as well in the future work.
1) aerodynamic drag force Fa is basically the force that the
air will produce to act against the car’s movement. This
natural phenomena is related to the air density ρ , and
car’s front area A , the vehicle’s speed v and finally the
drag coefficient Cd . Thus, the drag force can be then
written as follow:
1
Fa = ρCd Av 2 . (5)
2
2) rolling friction force Fr is the natural force generated due
to the wheels friction with the road. It can be described
mathematically under the following equation:
Fig. 2: The membership functions for Input e(t)
Fr = mgCr sgn(v) . (6)
where m denotes the car’s mass, g is the gravitational constant B. Output Membership Functions
9.8 m/s2 , Cr is the friction coefficient and sgn is the sign For the output fuzzy control, the fuzzy range set to be
function. Here is the typical values for some of the constants between -0.1 → 1 which is the control input signal to the
that we use in this project for the simulation system. As a generic fuzzy start, we will use the triangles
ρ = 1.3 mk3 linguistic variables with evenly distribution for between the
Cd = 0.32 specified range. The linguistic variables for the fuzzy output
Cr = 0.01 control are V eryM in, M in, M id, High and V eryHigh
A = 2.4 m2 . speeds.

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de(t)
Fig. 3: The membership functions for Input dt
Fig. 4: The Fuzzy output membership functions to the control
signal Speed
C. Methodology Of Setting The Rules
Since we are using Mamdani rules, then the most generic
approach of setting the rules is by considering the normal
control step response and identify the regions that needed to
be considered in generating the rules. Fig.5 shows that we
have 4 main regions that we need to base our rules upon in
order to have a reasonable control response [1]. The following
is the definition for each region:
• When the error is positive and rate of change is positive
• When the error is negative and rate of change is positive
• When the error is negative and rate of change is negative
• When the error is positive and rate of change is negative
So, according to the aforementioned design criteria, we can
adjust the output of the fuzzy controller to accommodate these
situations with the proper actions. Fig.6 is a summary of the
rules in a very simpler and common form, also you can find
the surface generated out of these rules.
IV. S IMULATION AND R ESULTS
A. MATLAB Simulink Model
The software used in this project is the MATLAB, we use
the simulink to build the model. The model consists of three
major parts:
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Fig. 5: Normal controller response characteristic
Fig. 6: Summary for the fuzzy rules
• The reference and feedback signal
• The controller part
• The plant or the system
In Fig.8 you can find the general look of the model. Following,
you find the detailed for each subsystem or math functions
used in this model for clarification. For the controller part, as
we can see that we use a saturation blocks to limit the inputs
into the fuzzy logic, for the error it was between -0.5 → 0.5,
and for the rate of the change it is between -1 → 1.
For the subsystem called EngineF orce, it has the torque
equation which mentioned in section (II) eq.(3).
For Subsystem DisturbanceF orce, it includes the aerody-
namics force as well as the road friction force, both equations
(5) and (6) were embedded in the subsystem using the normal
math function.
B. Simulation and Results
For the simulation part, we have tested the system to include
the different level of speeds, so we added the modified model
that will dynamically change the gear selection based on a
simple graph shown in Fig. 11 Thus, the speed changes the
gear location according to the speed based on this graph.
Hence, we set several testing scenario for different weights
and compare the results with the PI controller.
1) When m = 3000 Kg, and initial speed is 25 mph, the step
response of the system as well as the amount of force
response are shown in the following Fig.12 and Fig.13
 Fig. 9: The Controller Parts of the model

Fig. 7: This is the surface generated based on the fuzzy rules,

inputs and outputs variables

Fig. 10: The Disturbance subsystem which have both Fa and

Fr equations

Fig. 8: The MATLAB Simulink model

2) When m = 2200 Kg, and initial speed is 25 mph, the

step response of the system as well as the amount of
force response are shown in Fig.14 and Fig.15
3) When m = 1000 Kg, and initial speed is 25 mph, the
step response of the system as well as the amount of
force response are shown in Fig.16 and Fig.17
We can clearly notice that the system response reaches
to the targeted speed faster with the car of less weight.
However, in general the system response for all three cases
indicates no overshoot and by that and with conservation, Fig. 11: The cruise-gear selection curve
we can say the controller design has met the design criteria
which consider by far very challenging for any PID controller.
to the fuzzy controller, the PI takes a little bit longer settling
time to reach the steady state compared to the Fuzzy controller
C. Performance Comparison between Fuzzy & PI Controllers which is quite faster. Also, The Fuzzy controller step response
This is just a comparison between the fuzzy controller and shows a very small fluctuation or hysteresis around 0.6%. This
PI controller to the performance of the same system. This small fluctuation is believed to be due to the membership
would help to identify the gap and areas that need to be studied functions adjustment which requires more improvements.
further for improvements.
For testing purposes, we pick the mass to be m = 1000 kg V. C ONCLUSION
and after tuning the PI controller to the best it could be. The intent of this project is to establish the platform of
We notice from the step response that the performance of the developing an optimum control technique design solution such
PI controller is very stable, and for the force engine, it is stable as the fuzzy controller that can address and resolve some of
as well which means a stable system in reality. In contrary the issues that the conventional PID can’t overcome due to the

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 Step Response with 3000Kg mass The Total force response for 2200Kg mass
30 2500
Desired Speed
Speed
2000
29

1500
28

Total Force
1000
dSpee

27
500

26
0

25
−500

24 −1000
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
Time Time

Fig. 12: The system step response for m=3000 Kg Fig. 15: The system step response for the total force needed

The Total force response for 3000Kg mass Step Response 1000Kg mass
2500 31
Total Force

2000 30

Desired Speed
1500 29 Speed
Total Force

1000 28

Speed
500 27

0 26

−500 25

−1000 24
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
Time Time

Fig. 13: The system step response for the total force needed Fig. 16: The system step response for m=1000 Kg

Step Response with 2200Kg mass The Total force response for 1000Kg mass
30 2500
Total Force
Desired Speed
Speed 2000
29

1500
28
Total Force

1000
Speed

27
500

26
0

25
−500

24 −1000
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
Time Time

Fig. 14: The system step response for m=2200 Kg Fig. 17: The system step response for the total force needed

nature of linearizion is works upon.
As we noticed from the simulation, the fuzzy controller’s
step response time was much better compared to the PI con-
troller which was taking longer time to reach the steady state,
Fuzzy controller takes around 6sec while the PI controller
takes 21sec.
In overall, we believe that the system can be improved by
adjusting the fuzzy rules as well as the membership functions
to reduce the ripples which causes small fluctuations especially
with higher weights. Also, as an insight toward future work,
we see a possibility to combine a controller that consists
of both the Fuzzy and PID controller to come up with an

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 [8] C. Qui, ”A Design of Automobile Cruise Control System Based on Fuzzy
Step Response with 1000Kg mass
31
PID”, In nfo. Science, Electronics and Electrical Engineering Int. Conf.,
Desired Speed 2014
Speed
30

29

28
Speed

27

26

25

24
0 10 20 30 40 50
Time

Fig. 18: The system step response for m=1000 Kg using PI

controller

The Total force response for 1000Kg mass

4000

3500

3000

2500
Total Force

2000

1500

1000

500

−500
0 10 20 30 40 50
Time

Fig. 19: The system step response for the total force needed
using PI controller

optimum control design with a better performance that each

has difficulties and limitations in nature.

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