Automatic vehicle-following
Date
1992ISBN
0-7803-0210-9Publisher
Publ by American Automatic Control CouncilSource
Proceedings of the American Control ConferenceProceedings of the 1992 American Control Conference
Volume
2Pages
1748-1752Google Scholar check
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Vehicle following and its effects on traffic flow has been an active area of research. Human driving involves reaction times, delays and human errors that affect traffic flow adversely. One way to eliminate human errors and delays in vehicle following is to replace the human driver with a computer control system and sensors. The purpose of this paper is to come up with a control system for automatic vehicle following, examine its effect on traffic flow and compare its performance with that of the human driver models. We proposed a control law for automatic vehicle following that is not cooperative i.e. it does not exchange information with other vehicles and yet is free of oscillations and slinky-effects. The elimination of the slinky-effect is achieved by using a safety distance separation rule that is proportional to the vehicle velocity (constant time headway). The performance of automatic vehicle following is found to be superior to that of the human driver models considered. It has a faster and better transient response that leads to a much smoother and faster traffic flow. Traffic flow rates can be improved considerably with automation due to the elimination of human delays and errors and the potential of using smaller and safer intervehicle spacings than those assumed by human drivers.