Effects of Follow Distance and Weight in Small

Scale Adaptive Cruise Control Systems (ACC)

Stop, Drop, and Roll
(Group 102-4)
Tony Abdo
Akshay Belur
Christopher Berthelet
James Brahney
Stephanie Mah
Alexander Max
Background
Adaptive Cruise Control widely used in automobiles
today
Automakers do not document methods of control in
detail
Sparse information on ACC design available to public

Difficulties/Challenges
Tuning of our controller
Refining wireless data collection procedure
Poor use of lab time

Motivation

Solutions

Better understand ACC control

Compare effects of weight and following distance on
overshoot and response rate
Contribute to publicly available knowledge of ACC
and help improve feature

Approached tuning using methodical procedure

Spent ample time testing functionality of data
collection outside of lab
Planned lab time activities ahead of lab

How ACC Works

Improvement over regular Cruise Control
Proximity sensors detect vehicle ahead
Throttle and brakes controlled to maintain set
distance from lead vehicle

Overshoot

Results & Discussion

Response Rate

Increase in weight and decrease in distance lead to

highest overshoot
Medium follow distance and low weight result in
slowest response rates

Experimental Setup

Lead and follow car built on similar platform

Lead car follows set velocity profile using cruise control
Follow car uses ACC to track lead car
Set follow distance and vehicle weight varied in 2factor, 3-level full factorial test