Showing papers by "Jeroen Ploeg published in 2015"

Graceful Degradation of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

Abstract: Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) employs wireless intervehicle communication, in addition to onboard sensors, to obtain string-stable vehicle-following behavior at small intervehicle distances As a consequence, however, CACC is vulnerable to communication impairments such as latency and packet loss In the latter case, it would effectively degrade to conventional adaptive cruise control (ACC), thereby increasing the minimal intervehicle distance needed for string-stable behavior To partially maintain the favorable string stability properties of CACC, a control strategy for graceful degradation of one-vehicle look-ahead CACC is proposed, based on estimating the preceding vehicle's acceleration using onboard sensors, such that the CACC can switch to this strategy in case of persistent packet loss In addition, a switching criterion is proposed in the case that the wireless link exhibits increased latency but does not (yet) suffer from persistent packet loss It is shown through simulations and experiments that the proposed strategy results in a noticeable improvement of string stability characteristics, when compared with the ACC fallback scenario

Interaction Protocols for Cooperative Merging and Lane Reduction Scenarios

Abstract: This paper presents the interaction protocols developed for execution of two common scenarios in daily traffic using cooperative automated vehicles. The first proposed scenario addresses merging of a (semi-)automated car on a highway within a platoon of (semi-)automated vehicles. The second scenario is an extension of the first scenario with a focus on a lane reduction where a platoon of automated vehicles merges into a second one on a different lane. The proposed interaction protocols are characterized by a sequence of maneuvers to execute the scenarios together with the corresponding communication message sets. Moreover, the vehicle control system should be equipped to implement these protocols. Therefore, the design strategy should address the interaction protocol as well as the control system design. The most important feature of the proposed design strategy is to decompose the scenarios into a sequence of basic maneuvers. This method provides a generic solution which can be implemented to other scenarios, too. Also, the thought behind the design approach is to follow the pattern that human drivers interact in similar daily traffic occasions as well as to ensure a distributed decision making mechanism where no fixed supervisor is required. In both scenarios, the platoon controllers are active to achieve the common control objective of platooning. However, for realization of the proposed scenarios, additional controllers are needed to perform the scenario-specific tasks.

Interactive Test Tool for Interoperable C-ITS Development

Abstract: This paper presents the architecture of an Interactive Test Tool (ITT) for interoperability testing of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS). Cooperative systems are developed by different manufacturers at different locations, which makes interoperability testing a tedious task. Up until now, interoperability testing is performed during physical meetings where the C-ITS devices are placed within range of wireless communication, and messages are exchanged. The ITT allows distributed (e.g. over Internet) interoperability testing starting from the network Transport Layer and all the way up to the Application Layer, e.g. to platooning. ITT clients can be implemented as Hardware-in-the-Loop, thus allowing to combine physical and virtual vehicles. Since the ITT considers each client as a black box, manufacturers can test together without revealing internal implementations to each other. The architecture of the ITT allows users to easily switch between physical wireless networking and virtual ITT networking. Therefore, only one implementation of the ITS communication stack is required for both development and testing, which reduces the work overhead and ensures that the stack that is used during the testing is the one deployed in the real world.