Coordinating Automated Vehicles via Communication

This dissertation addresses the coordination of automated vehicles in an Auto- mated Highway System (AHS). Tra c in an AHS is organized as tightly spaced platoons to increase road capacity and safety. Vehicles in AHS are automated and their safe interaction is the subject of this research. This dissertation discusses issues in the design and imple- mentation of a controller for automated vehicles that coordinates the interaction between vehicles. We rst de ne a formalism for safe interaction of automated vehicles and then design a controller algorithm for an individual vehicle that guarantees such safe interaction. The algorithm for the vehicle controller requires real-time information about the relative positions and planned actions of its neighboring vehicles. Therefore, a communication struc- ture is needed to provide this information. We propose a communication structure of local and wide area networks, LANs and WANs, that allows automated vehicles to exchange this information. We also explain communication address resolution in the context of AHS and propose address resolution schemes for one-lane and multi-lane AHS. The scheme for a multi-lane AHS is space-time division multiple access (STDMA) which is an innovative solution to control multiple user access to the communication channel. Finally, we present a vehicle positioning system by using spread spectrum magnetic signals which is used in STDMA communication and coordination control.