Mixed Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control for light commercial vehicles

In vehicle platooning, Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) System controls the distance, relative velocity or more preferably time headway between preceding vehicles. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control System, on the other hand, uses vehicle to vehicle communication to gather information of vehicles further in front. Thus vehicles can follow each other at a closer distance, thereby improving traffic flow characteristics. This paper presents a new control approach by combining ACC and CACC algorithms and its application on light commercial vehicles. The new algorithm is tested for different single lane traffic simulations with dynamic models for loaded and unloaded vehicles. Delay and noise in the communication channels are also taken into account.