Abstract

It is becoming increasingly important to gain real-life insights into the effects of vehicle automation with the continued introduction of cooperative and automated vehicles (CAV). This study reports on the findings of a field operational test (FOT) of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) vehicles on an arterial corridor with other traffic. The FOT demonstrated that that CACC vehicles can operate well under such conditions and can operate in platoons at lower time-headways than human driven vehicles. Platoon disengagement and cut-ins were analysed and showed that although many platoon break-ups are unavoidable, CACC operation was carried out without incident with frequent recoupling of platoons occurring. Most cut-ins occurred near to intersections, where vehicles are required to merge or need to change lanes to turn off the main corridor. It was not possible to derive potential traffic flow improvements from the FOT, due to a limited overall penetration rate and limitations of the intelligent traffic signals. The findings offer greater insights into the performance of CAV technology in a suburban environment and can aid road authorities to prepare infrastructure for the broader introduction of CAVs as well as the development of modelling tools to improve impact analysis of CAVs in urban environments.

Highlights

  • This study reports on the findings of a field operational test (FOT) of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) vehicles on an arterial corridor with other traffic

  • This paper reports on the findings of a field operational test (FOT) of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) enabled vehicles on an arterial corridor with other traffic, which includes the presence and use of intelligent traffic signals for platoon communication and prioritisation

  • Compared to motorway traffic, increased platoon break ups and cut-ins must be expected, maintaining a flexible ability to platoon in CACC formation means that the use of CACC does not need to rely on maintaining a rigid platoon formation to see potential benefits that may occur from shorter time headways and faster inter-vehicle reaction times

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Summary

Introduction

This paper reports on the findings of a field operational test (FOT) of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) enabled vehicles on an arterial corridor with other traffic, which includes the presence and use of intelligent traffic signals (iTS) for platoon communication and prioritisation. The findings from the tests give greater insights into the performance of cooperative and automated vehicle (CAV) and allow road authorities to prepare infrastructure for a broader introduction of CAVs. The findings can aid the development of modelling tools to improve impact analysis of CAVs in urban environments. The introduction of CAVs has led to road authorities, municipalities and researchers posing many questions on various issues related to traffic flow, vehicle interaction and safety, among many others. The use of iTS in the FOT was operational, but its effectiveness was limited This was mainly due to the traffic signal using a dynamic control strategy, which is very common in The Netherlands.

Field operational test description
CACC vehicles
Drivers
Traffic signals communications
FOT setup and corridor
FOT scenarios
Performance analysis based on data
Analysis approach
Platooning performance
Quantitative analysis
Qualitative analysis
CACC disengagement locations
Influence on traffic performance
Summary of main findings
Findings
Discussion
Conclusions
Full Text
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