Study on vehicle longitudinal distance control in intelligent transportation system

Vehicle following for traffic safety has been an active area of research. Longitudinal distance automate control is key for vehicle following mode in autonomous cruise system. Sliding mode control has been applied in vehicle longitudinal distance control. But most of them ignore or simplify acceleration information and control performance is reduced. In this paper the longitudinal distance sliding mode control system with tracking-differentiator is designed and applied for longitudinal distance control. It provides the relative acceleration information needed in calculating the subject vehicle desired acceleration for longitudinal distance sliding mode control system. Theoretical analysis and computer simulation prove that the designed control system with tracking-differentiator can effectively eastimate the relative acceleration information and provides satisfactory performance for distance control.