车松珊同学投稿的《Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation for Virtual Coupling Train Control Methods》 作为海报在2026年自动化大会上展示。
(PaperID: 123452)
With growing passenger demand, urban rail transit lines are increasingly constrained by the line capacity achievable under moving-block operation. Virtual coupling, in which cooperatively controlled trains run at reduced tracking headways, offers a promising way to relieve this bottleneck. Because such operation is safety-critical, repeatable and realistic experimental validation remains a major obstacle to its practical deployment. This paper develops a hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) simulation platform for virtual coupling train following control, which integrates real onboard equipment with simulated following trains to reproduce a three-train convoy, and embeds a coupling-process monitoring module that synchronously supervises the coupling status and records data, enabling quantitative and reproducible comparison of following-control algorithms. On this platform, a model predictive control (MPC) following strategy is implemented and evaluated under three representative scenarios covering convoy operation, coupling, and decoupling, and is further benchmarked against a PID controller. The results show that MPC achieves more stable following and outperforms PID in key coupling indicators. The proposed platform improves test repeatability and scenario adaptability, providing effective support for advancing the practical implementation of virtual coupling in urban rail transit systems.
