A SIMPLIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR STRING STABILITY ANALYSIS OF AUTOMATED VEHICLES

Automated vehicles traveling in platoons must exhibit stability both i ndividually and as a group, a property referred to as ''string stabili ty''. We propose a new framework for evaluating the longitudinal strin g stability properties of platoons of automated vehicles. In this fram ework, the platoon is considered to be a mass-spring-damper system wit h linear characteristics. The resulting closed-loop representation yie lds transfer functions and impulse responses that can be analyzed to d etermine the string stability properties of the platoon. This framewor k facilitates qualitative comparisons of the effects of various contro ller characteristics, such as time headway and intervehicle communicat ion, on string stability.