Connect & Drive: On the use of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control to increase Traffic Stability and Efficiency

At moderate to high traffic densities, road traffic exhibits an unstable behavior, resulting in decrease traffic efficiency. One of the phenomena that can be observed at these densities is the propagation of shock waves against the flow of traffic, which seriously reduce the speed of vehicles. The Connect & Drive project aims to mitigate these shock waves by designing a cooperative adaptive cruise control system, based on the use of vehicle to vehicle communications. Besides increasing traffic efficiency, such a system could also increase traffic safety, and reduce emission of vehicles. The project considers aspects of traffic dynamics, control systems, human machine interaction, and communication systems in a multidisciplinary approach. Besides a model-based approach, to investigate e.g. scalability aspects, the pro ject will deliver a prototype system that will be tested with cars driving in a highway scenario. In this talk, I will highlight some of the problems tackled in the Connect & Drive pro ject, and outline ideas for solution. The focus of the presentation will be on vehicle-to-vehicle communication system aspects.