Strategy for Vehicle Adaptive Cruise Control Considering the Reaction Headway

A concept of reaction headway is introduced and a single control algorithm is used to realize adaptive cruise control (ACC). Combined with the experience of skilled driver, reaction headway is used to describe when the subject vehicle should react to the preceding vehicle. The proposed ACC system has an upper level controller and a lower level controller, the architecture of the upper level controller has considered the reaction headway, and the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller and model predictive control (MPC) controller has been designed, respectively. The feasibility of the system is verified by using co-simulation of MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim, and vehicle tests are carried out on a flat road. The results show that even the information of the preceding vehicle change suddenly, or the speed of the preceding vehicle exceeds the set speed of the subject vehicle diver, the proposed system can deal with the complicated traffic information effectively, safety and comfortable driving has been achieved. The sudden changes of accelerations have been avoided in the process of mode switching, and the ride experiences of the passengers have been enhanced.