Autonomous intelligent cruise control with actuator delays (Q1286808)

The movement of a convoy of vehicles travelling on a single lane is modelled by linear ODEs with small constant delays. The movement of a vehicle is called `stable' when its driver is able to maintain a prescribed distance from the preceding vehicle, and to stop his vehicle without a collision. The speed of the convoy is determined by the lead vehicle. The lane is assumed to be straight, level, and free of obstacles, including other vehicles. The analysis is reduced to matrix algebra, as current practice recommends. `Stability' demands that all eigenvalues have negative real parts and negligibly small imaginary ones. ``Slinking'' and oscillatory movements are thus strongly reduced. Since `stability' does not fix all parameters, there exists a possibility of imposing an additional `optimal' constraint. The object of the study is to replace human drivers by automatic ones. The unobstructed convoy scheme is naive, and inferior to that one used by railways. It is obvious that none of the authors has ever tried to follow another car on a congested highway, where aggressive overtaking, slowdowns and jams (German: ``Staus'') are more the rule than an exception. -- A nowadays rather common control engineering paper!