Range policy of adaptive cruise control vehicles for improved flow stability and string stability

• Published in: IEEE transactions on intelligent transportation systems Vol. 6; no. 2; pp. 229 - 237
• Main Authors: Zhou, J., Peng, H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ IEEE 01.06.2005; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive control; Adaptive control systems; Adaptive cruise control; Algorithm design and analysis; Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Constraint optimization; Control theory. Systems; Cruise control; Density; Design methodology; Exact sciences and technology; Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction; Humans; Policies; Programmable control; range policy; Robotics; Sliding mode control; Stability; string stability; Strings; Traffic control; Traffic flow; traffic flow stability; Vehicles; Human; Adaptive cruise control; Sliding mode; Variable structure system; Control synthesis; string stability; Spacing; Adaptive control; Optimization; Traffic flow; range policy; traffic flow stability; Character string
• ISSN: 1524-9050; 1558-0016
• DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2005.848359

A methodology to design the range policy of adaptive cruise control vehicles and its companion servoloop control algorithm is presented in this paper. A nonlinear range policy for improved traffic flow stability and string stability is proposed and its performance is compared against the constant time headway policy, the range policy employed by human drivers, and the Greenshields policy. The proposed range policy is obtained through an optimization procedure with traffic flow and stability constraints. A complementary controller is then designed based on the sliding mode technique. Microscopic simulation results show that stable traffic flow is achieved by the proposed method up to a significantly higher traffic density.