On microscopic modelling of adaptive cruise control systems

Abstract

The Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system, is one of the emerging vehicle technologies that has already been deployed in the market. Although it was designed mainly to enhance driver comfort and passengers’ safety, it also affects the dynamics of traffic flow. For this reason, a strong research interest in the field of modelling and simulation of ACC-equipped vehicles has been increasingly observed in the last years. In this work, previous modelling efforts reported in the literature are reviewed, and some critical aspects to be considered when designing or simulating such systems are discussed. Moreover, the integration of ACC-equipped vehicle simulation in the commercial traffic simulator Aimsun is described; this is subsequently used to run simulations for different penetration rates of ACC-equipped vehicles, different desired time-gap settings and different networks, to assess their impact on traffic flow characteristics.