A Cruise Control Method for Connected Vehicle Systems Considering Side Vehicles Merging Behavior

On the basis of wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication, this paper proposes a superior control strategy for the merging behavior of connected cruise control (CCC) considering the effect of time delays. A novel range policy that integrates the consideration of side-vehicle merging scene is established, based on which a general strategy is proposed focusing on the acceleration control and incorporating various information delays. In this portion, the time-delay effect for the plant stability and head-to-tail string stability of CCC is explored and analyzed in detail. The results demonstrate that the traffic efficiency, the driving safety, and the ride comfort of CCC vehicles can be improved by the proposed method. In addition, the sensitivity study regarding the controller gain and the platoon’s connectivity structure is exploited, which is proved to be of importance for system stability.