Laser-Based Adaptive Cruise Control for Intelligent Vehicles

Vehicle and highway automation is believed to reduce the risk of accident, improve safety, increase capacity, reduce fuel consumption and enchance overall comfort and performance for drivers. One of the most important research topics in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), aiming at adapting the vehicle speed to a predefined value while keeping a safe gap with regard to potential obstacles. For this purpose, a laserscanner system provides the distance between the ego vehicle and the preceding vehicle on the road. The complete system can be understood as a Laser-based ACC controller, based on Fuzzy Logic, which assists the vehicle velocity control offering driving strategies and actuation over the throttle of a car. This controller is embedded in an automatic driving system installed in two testbed mass-produced cars operating in a real environment. The results obtained in these experiments show a good performance of the Laser-based gap controller, which is adaptable to all speeds and safe gap selections.