Autonomous intelligent cruise control using both front and back information for tight vehicle following maneuvers

For manual driving, human drivers always look both ahead and behind to make the proper decision for assuring driving safety. It is the purpose of this paper to design an autonomous intelligent cruise control (AICC) which mimics this human driving behavior. The proposed AICC law uses information not only from the immediate predecessor but also from the immediate follower to make the proper control decision. Constant time headway safety policy is used in the design and analysis of AICC law. The individual vehicle stability, and platoon stability in both directions (backward and forward) are guaranteed by the proposed AICC law. In addition, the proposed controller can also be used to operate vehicles with constant spacing safety policy in a platoon. The platoon stability is achieved by the proposed controller (which uses only information from the immediate predecessor and follower) without any preview information from the platoon leader.