A practical solution to the string stability problem in autonomous vehicle following

This work describes an improved autonomous vehicle following control scheme based on inter-vehicle communication. A previously developed autonomous following algorithm uses an on-board laser scanning radar sensor (LIDAR) to measure the ego-vehicle's relative position with respect to its preceding vehicle, and the steering command is calculated for the ego-vehicle to follow the preceding vehicle. In this control scheme, the performance of the following vehicle largely depends on the behavior of the preceding vehicle. String stability becomes a serious issue when this control algorithm is applied to a platoon of vehicles. The deterioration of road tracking performance is another concern. The road tracking error of one vehicle is passed on to following vehicles, and the errors may accumulate as they propagate in the upstream direction. It is shown in the paper that inter-vehicle communication is a practical solution to this problem. Experimental and simulation results are presented.