Safety oriented maneuvers for IVHS

The automated vehicle/highway system architecture of the California PATH program organizes traffic into platoons of closely spaced vehicles. Platoons are formed and broken up by two longitudinal control maneuvers, merge and split. A third longitudinal maneuver, decelerate to change lanes, allows a platoon switching from one lane to another to enter its new lane at a safe spacing and speed. This paper presents a robust control strategy for these maneuvers. Safety is assured by forcing the velocity of the trail platoon to remain under a maximum safe velocity boundary. When safety is not threatened, the vehicles' jerk and acceleration remain within comfort limits. Because no timed nominal trajectories are used, completion of the maneuvers does not depend on vehicles meeting prescribed acceleration capabilities.