A guaranteed-comfort and safe adaptive cruise control by considering driver’s acceptance level

One of the most important parameters which directly effects the performance of Adaptive Cruise Control systems is the reference signal. In order to design this signal based on the inter-distance policy between vehicles, the system’s conflicting constraints i.e. safety, comfort, and driver’s acceptance level must be simultaneously considered. When the front vehicle is far from the host vehicle, drivers usually tend to reduce their relative distance which may put the safety of passengers at risk. To resolve this conflict, we introduced a non-linear reference model with novel Sine and Gaussian functions. In order to meet driver’s acceptance level and meet the safety and comfort criteria of the passengers, the analytically-derived reference signals are based on functions which provide higher velocities in high relative distances and adopt smoother variations with guaranteed safety in small relative distances. Moreover, to apply the reference values on the vehicle’s dynamic parts, in this paper, a customized fuzzy controller is developed. The simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed method so that while in high relative distances, more driving acceptance level can be achieved, in small relative distances, it satisfies the safety and comfort of passengers.