Intelligent Cruise Control System Design based on a Traffic Flow Specification

This paper investigates the problem of designing intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) algorithms for partially and fully automated highways. ICC algorithms must guarantee that density disturbances attenuate as they propagate upstream. Such a desirable property of traffic is dependent on the spacing policy employed by automated vehicles and on the availability of information required to synthesize a string stable control law consistent with the employed spacing policy. The first pan of the paper is concerned with the design of the spacing policy and the latter part is concerned with synthesizing ICC algorithms. Various other issues relating to the design of ICC are also discussed.