Mixing V2V- and non-V2V-equipped vehicles in car following

Abstract

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) provides significant traffic flow improvements when a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication link exists with the preceding vehicle, but it degrades to an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) when this communication link is no longer available. This degradation occurs even if the information from another V2V-equipped vehicle ahead (different to the preceding one) is still available. This paper presents a novel car-following control system–Advanced Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (ACACC)–that benefits from the existing communication with this vehicle ahead in the string, reducing inter-vehicle gap whereas keeping string stability. The proposed control structure provides a hybrid behaviour between two CACC controllers with different time gaps according to the string position of the vehicle with the V2V communication link available. An stable hybrid behavior between both controllers is ensured through the Youla-Kucera parameterization. Simulation and real experiments show the proper behaviour of the designed control algorithm and a good performance compared to existing ACC/CACC controllers.