Intelligent Cruise Control System Design Based on a Traffic Flow Specification

This paper investigates the problem of designing an Intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) algorithm for automated vehicles. An ICC algorithm, if implemented by every vehicle in the traffic, must guarantee that the density disturbances attenuate as they propagate up stream. Such a desirable property of the traffic is dependent on the spacing policy employed by automated vehicles and on the availability of information required to synthesize a string stable control law consistent with the employed spacing policy. The first part of the paper is concerned with the design of a spacing policy and the latter part is concerned with synthesizing an ICC algorithm for automated vehicles. Various other issues relating to the design of an ICC algorithm are also discussed.