Plant error analysis and compensation in adaptive cruise control systems

The parameters of an adaptable cruise control system may change considerably during the course of operation. The addition of passengers, the increased friction as parts wear and the reduction in mass as fuel is consumed all provided changes to the load of the system. These variations and many others may be modeled as a non-perfect plant, called an uncertain or corrupted plant. In initial control analysis, the adaptive cruise control systems are assumed to have a perfect plant; that is to say, the plant always behaves as commanded. Plant corruption may come from a variation in performance through use or misuse, or from noise or imperfections in the sensor signal data. A model for plant corruption is applied and methods for analysis and compensation are explored. To facilitate analysis, system identification has been employed to produce a reduced-order model.