Adaptive Cruise Control for Ground Vehicles using Control Barrier Function under Weather based Surface Conditions

This paper proposes the notion of control technique for ground vehicles to achieve adaptive cruise control on different surface conditions due to weather effect. The applied technique utilizes the combination of control barrier function (CBF) and control Lyapunov function (CLF) with surface condition taken into account. The presence of a control barrier function ensures avoidance of unsafe set of values (unacceptable states) whereas existence of control Lyapunov function helps to reach a target state. Achievement of stability (desired state) as well as safety (collision avoidance) through control Lyapunov function and control barrier function respectively act as constraints of a quadratic program. We have found that the aforementioned control technique is helpful under different surface conditions due to weather and thus simultaneous achievement of control objective (desired target state by CLF) and safety objective (allowable states represented by CBF) can be met. These constructions will be demonstrated through Matlab based simulations in the context of weather based different surface conditions to achieve adaptive cruise control for ground vehicles where the attainment of target velocity is taken as soft constraint and hard constraint is imposed on attainment of desired safety objective by ego vehicle.