Design of look-ahead cruise control using road and traffic conditions

The purpose of the look-ahead control is to design the speed of a vehicle in order to minimize longitudinal control energy while keeping travelling time and, moreover, considering topographic data and speed limits along the road. The paper proposes the extension of the control design with local traffic information in such a way that a balance between the designed speed and the traffic flow is guaranteed. A method has been elaborated for the design of a decision algorithm for lane-change maneuvers based on the consideration of surrounding vehicles. The method is illustrated through a complex simulation example based on the CarSim software.