Safety oriented maneuvers for IVHS

The automated vehicle/highway system architecture of the California PATH program organizes traffic into platoons of closely spaced vehicles. Platoons are formed and broken up by two longitudinal control maneuvers, merge and split. A third longitudinal maneuver, decelerate to change lanes, allows a platoon switching from one lane to another to enter its new lane at a safe spacing and speed. This paper presents a robust control strategy for these maneuvers. Safety is assured by forcing the velocity of the trail platoon to remain under a maximum safe velocity boundary. When safety is not threatened, the vehicles´ jerk and acceleration remain within comfort limits. Because no timed nominal trajectories are used, completion of the maneuvers does not depend on vehicles meeting prescribed acceleration capabilities