Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control in Real Traffic Situations

Milanés, Vicente; Shladover, Steven E; Spring, John; Nowakowski, Christopher; Kawazoe, Hiroshi; Nakamura, Masahide · 2013 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1109/tits.2013.2278494

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Summary

This paper addresses the limitations of commercially available Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems, which rely solely on onboard sensors and often suffer from response delays that destabilize vehicle following behavior. The authors propose a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system that integrates Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) wireless communication to provide preview information from vehicles ahead of the immediate predecessor. This approach aims to improve traffic flow capacity, reduce congestion, and enhance string stability by allowing for significantly shorter, safer time gaps between vehicles. The study implements and tests a CACC system on four production Infiniti M56 vehicles equipped with factory lidar-based ACC. The experimental setup includes a 5.9 GHz Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) system and a dSpace MicroAutoBox for control implementation. The control architecture consists of two stages: a gap closing controller for approaching maneuvers and a gap regulation controller for maintaining the desired time gap once in the platoon. The gap regulation controller utilizes a proportional-derivative structure that incorporates information from both the preceding and leading vehicles via V2V communication. The vehicle dynamics were modeled using second-order transfer functions with time delays, identified from experimental step responses. The CACC system allows for time gaps as short as 0.6 seconds, compared to the minimum 1.1 seconds available in the commercial ACC. Experiments were conducted in real traffic scenarios to validate the controller’s performance, including cut-in and cut-out maneuvers. The results demonstrate that the CACC system achieves superior string stability compared to the production ACC. The inclusion of leading vehicle information via V2V communication significantly reduces oscillations caused by speed changes in the platoon. The system successfully maintained the desired time gaps with smooth acceleration and braking responses, adhering to the string stability criteria where disturbances do not amplify downstream. The experimental data confirmed that the theoretical models accurately represented the vehicle dynamics, and the tuned control parameters provided a comfortable riding quality while ensuring safety. The significance of this work lies in demonstrating the practical feasibility of CACC in production vehicles using real-world traffic conditions. By leveraging V2V communications, the system overcomes the limitations of sensor-only ACC, enabling tighter vehicle spacing and improved traffic flow. The findings highlight the importance of considering real vehicle dynamics and communication delays in controller design, providing a validated framework for future cooperative intelligent transportation systems. This research contributes to the development of safer, more efficient automated driving technologies that can be integrated into existing vehicle platforms.

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• v2x connected vehicle