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The commercial vehicle is widely used in the overland transport. A prediction is given on the 9th annual China automotive industry forum that the number of the global commercial vehicles will reach eight million by the year of 2016. However, since the distance between its gravity centre and the ground is larger than that of the passenger vehicle, considering its comparatively short wheelbase, the rollover accident, which is fatal to the drivers and always makes enormous loss of merchandises, easily occurs in the case of commercial vehicles. As the number of the commercial vehicle is increasing fast, the accidents will occur more frequently, the losses will be increasingly enormous. To solve the problem, many researches about rollover early warning systems have been done. In most cases, it is assumed that the references of the vehicle are given.

With vehicle platooning becoming an important research field in recent years, it is now imperative to introduce platoons as part of the dynamic environment, considering overtaking and merging possibilities. This article studies optimal speed trajectories and longitudinal control with optimized energy efficiency for an autonomous vehicle with several preceding platoons and full terrain information. It aims at improving the energy efficiency of vehicles with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). A forward discrete dynamic programming (DDP) algorithm with distance as the discretization basis is used to derive speed trajectories in the trade-off between air drag reduction and energy saved by utilizing the road slope information. The problem is decomposed into decisions whether to overtake or to merge into the nearest platoon with the assumption of sufficient distance among platoons.