The Maseeh Mathematics & Statistics
Colloquium Series.
Date and time: Friday, November 06, 2009 3:15 PMRoom: NH 209
Speaker: Swaroop Darbha, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M
www2.mengr.tamu.edu/FacultyProfiles/facultyinformation.asp?LastName=dswaroop
Title: String Stability of Automatic Vehicle Following Systems
Abstract: Automatic Vehicle Following Systems (AVFS) have been investigated for the past seventy years and have recently been deployed in passenger vehicles in the form of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) Systems. AVFS couple the motion of vehicles by feedback and consequently, errors in spacing and velocity can propagate in a collection of vehicles employing AVFS. Amplification of errors in spacing can cause accidents and hence, is an important topic to be studied from a practical viewpoint. The topic of string stability in automatic vehicles is precisely concerned with this problem and is the central focus of my talk. In this talk, I will relate how information flow among vehicles plays an important role in the propagation of errors by considering various types of information flow graphs. In particular, I will show that symmetric information flow graphs are not suited for automatic vehicle following systems that desire to maintain a fixed distance from other vehicles throughout their motion.