Velocity selection by a human driver compared to look-ahead control

Abstract

The paper focuses on the design of look-ahead cruise control systems which can adopt the behavior of the driver in the velocity selection process. The automatic system uses information about the oncoming road sections to calculate an economically optimal velocity for the vehicle. This velocity profile may differ greatly from the one selected by a human driver, who only has visual and acoustic information of the oncoming road section. The motivation of the paper is to analyze the behavior of the driver in terms of velocity selection in order to set up a longitudinal driver model. By adopting the driver model in the automatic system’s velocity selection process, the motion of the vehicle can be more comfortable for the driver and the passengers of the vehicle, and the traveling time may be closer to that of the human driver.