Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) in Controlled and Real-World Environments: Testing and Results

The transportation industry annually travels more than 6 times as many miles as passenger vehicles [1]. The fuel cost associated with this represents 38% of the total marginal operating cost for this industry [8]. As a result, industry’s interest in applications of autonomy have grown. One application of this technology is Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) using Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC). Auburn University outfitted four class 8 vehicles, two Peterbilt 579’s and two M915’s, with a basic hardware suite, and software library to enable level 1 autonomy. These algorithms were tested in controlled environments, such as the American Center for Mobility (ACM), and on public roads, such as highway 280 in Alabama, and Interstates 275/696 in Michigan. This paper reviews the results of these real-world tests and discusses the anomalies and failures that occurred during testing.

Citation: Jacob Ward, Patrick Smith, Dan Pierce, David Bevly, Paul Richardson, Sridhar Lakshmanan, Athanasios Argyris, Brandon Smyth, Cristian Adam, Scott Heim “Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) in Controlled and Real-World Environments: Testing and Results”, In Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 13-15, 2019.