Safety-critical traffic control by connected automated vehicles

• Published in: Transportation research. Part C, Emerging technologies Vol. 154; p. 104230
• Main Authors: Zhao, Chenguang, Yu, Huan, Molnar, Tamas G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2023
• Subjects: Connected automated vehicle; Control barrier function; Mixed traffic; Safety-critical control; State observer; Traffic control; Traffic control; State observer; Connected automated vehicle; Control barrier function; Safety-critical control; Mixed traffic
• ISSN: 0968-090X; 1879-2359
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2023.104230

Connected automated vehicles (CAVs) have shown great potential in improving traffic throughput and stability. Although various longitudinal control strategies have been developed for CAVs to achieve string stability in mixed-autonomy traffic systems, the potential impact of these controllers on safety has not yet been fully addressed. This paper proposes safety-critical traffic control (STC) by CAVs—a strategy that allows a CAV to maintain safety relative to both the preceding vehicle and the following human-driven vehicles (HVs). Specifically, we utilize control barrier functions (CBFs) to impart collision-free behavior with formal safety guarantees to the closed-loop system. The safety of both the CAV and HVs is incorporated into the framework through a quadratic program-based controller that minimizes deviation from a nominal stabilizing traffic controller subject to CBF-based safety constraints. Considering that some state information of the following HVs may be unavailable to the CAV, we employ state observer-based CBFs for STC. Finally, we conduct extensive numerical simulations – that include vehicle trajectories from real data – to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach in achieving provably safe traffic.