The Impact of Predictive Cruise Control on Traffic Flow and Energy Consumption

A vehicle Predictive Cruise Control system has been developed to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicle and traffic flow performance based on the asymmetric traffic theory. The Predictive Cruise Control system consists of four parts: (1) Deceleration based Safety Surrogate Measure, (2) Adaptive Cruise Control, (3) Multi-vehicle measurement, and (4) Predictive Cruise Control. Adaptive Cruise Control basically decides the acceleration/deceleration action based on the estimated deceleration-based safety surrogate measure of the first leader vehicle. Then, Predictive Cruise Control adjusts the acceleration/deceleration action based on the multi-vehicle measurements, which represent the future traffic condition of the subject vehicle. The developed system is tested by simulating the real vehicle trajectories from the NGSIM data and comparing the results with real following pattern. It was found that the newly proposed Predictive Cruise Control system can contribute to energy consumption and traffic flow performance, because it can effectively suppress the shockwave from the downstream and remove the unnecessary deceleration and acceleration action.

[1]  D. Swaroop,et al.  A review of constant time headway policy for automatic vehicle following , 2001, ITSC 2001. 2001 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8585).

[2]  Hwasoo Yeo,et al.  Asymmetric Microscopic Driving Behavior Theory , 2008 .

[3]  Petros A. Ioannou,et al.  Autonomous intelligent cruise control , 1993 .

[4]  Davis Lc.  Effect of adaptive cruise control systems on traffic flow. , 2004 .

[5]  Petros A. Ioannou,et al.  Evaluation of ACC vehicles in mixed traffic: lane change effects and sensitivity analysis , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[6]  Jing Zhou,et al.  Range policy of adaptive cruise control vehicles for improved flow stability and string stability , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[7]  Alexander Skabardonis,et al.  Microscopic fundamental relationships between vehicle speed and spacing in view of asymmetric traffic theory , 2011, 2011 14th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).

[8]  Swaroop Darbha,et al.  Intelligent Cruise Control Systems And Traffic Flow Stability , 1998 .

[9]  Hariharan Krishnan,et al.  Microscopic Traffic Simulation of Vehicle-to-Vehicle Hazard Alerts on Freeway , 2010 .

[10]  L. Davis.  Effect of adaptive cruise control systems on traffic flow. , 2004, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.