This report describes the results of experimental evaluation of longitudinal control algorithms for commercial heavy vehicles (CHVs). Given the problem of delays in the fuel and brake actuators of automated CHVs, the researchers present improved modeling of air brakes for CHVs, and novel nonlinear algorithms for the longitudinal control of CHVs without intervehicle communication. The significance of these results in terms of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) deployment is that one of the major obstacles to autonomous vehicle following for CHVs has now been removed The authors also point out that adaptive cruise control can now be implemented in CHVs that are not equipped with Electronic Brake Systems.

This report focuses on the design of longitudinal control algorithms for commercial heavy vehicles (CHVs). The algorithms use nonlinear spacing policies, backstepping control design, and aggressive prediction schemes to deal with the presence of significant delays and saturations in the fuel and brake actuators. The algorithms can also deal with delays both in the presence and in the absence of intervehicle communication. A by-product on this research is the development of two software packages, Platoon-Builder and TruckVis, for simulation and animation of CHV platoons. Additionally, another important result of this project is a new simplified framework for evaluating the longitudinal string stability properties of platoons of automated vehicles.