Evaluation of Driver Car-Following Behavior Models for Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Systems

A cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) system targeted to obtain a high level of user acceptance must replicate the driving experience in each CACC vehicle without compromising the occupant’s comfort. “User acceptance” can be defined as the safety and comfort of the occupant in the CACC vehicle in terms of acceptable vehicle dynamics (i.e., the maximum acceleration or deceleration) and string stability (i.e., the fluctuations in the vehicle’s position, speed, and acceleration). The primary objective of this study was to develop an evaluation framework for the application of a driver car-following behavior model in CACC system design to ensure user acceptance in terms of vehicle dynamics and string stability. The authors adopted two widely used driver car-following behavior models, (a) the optimum velocity model (OVM) and (b) the intelligent driver model (IDM), to prove the efficacy of the evaluation framework developed in this research for CACC system design. A platoon of six vehicles was simulated for three traffic flow states (uniform speed, speed with constant acceleration, and speed with constant deceleration) with different acceleration and deceleration rates. The maximum acceleration or deceleration and the sum of the squares of the errors of the follower vehicle speed were measured to evaluate user acceptance in terms of vehicle dynamics and string stability. Analysis of the simulation results revealed that the OVM performed better at modeling a CACC system than did the IDM in terms of acceptable vehicle dynamics and string stability.

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