This paper proposes a new method to control vehicle spacing automatically using only two signals: a spacing signal measured by a sensor and a special signal on a target position which comes from an immediate preceding vehicle. It is shown that this spacing control scheme yields a platoon with string stability using a spacing servo controller with realistic performance, while the same servo controller cannot make the platoon stable if it is used in a vehicle following scheme. Under the proposed scheme, a platoon can be constructed autonomously, can grow without any limitation on the number of member vehicles and can be reconstructed following splitting and merging using a simple policy. Computer simulation results have suggested that the proposed scheme may have effectiveness for practical use. For the covering abstract see ITRD E114174.
Samenvatting