This report addresses the problem of automation of heavy-duty vehicles. After a brief description of the dynamic model used in the design and simulations, the authors develop nonlinear controllers with adaptation, first for speed control and then for vehicle follower longitudinal control. Both autonomous operation as well as intervehicle communication are considered, and the performance of the controllers in several different scenarios through simulation are evaluated.

In this report, the authors develop two new nonlinear spacing policies, variable time headway and variable separation error gain, designed to all but eliminate the undesirable side effect of large steady-state intervehicle spacings. This disadvantage is pronounced in heavy-duty vehicles, which require larger time headways due to their low actuation-to- weight ratio. The first policy significantly reduces the transient errors and allows for the use of much smaller spacings in autonomous platoon operation, while the second one results in smoother and more robust longitudinal control.

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.