Influence of Autonomous and Connected Vehicles on Stability of Traffic Flow
The driving environment is expected to change by the introduction of connected and autonomous vehicles. These technologies are intended to improve safety and mobility in transportation systems. Connected Vehicle technology provides real time information about surrounding traffic condition as well as guidance from the traffic management center. This additional information is expected to improve drivers' efficiency, response, and comfort while improving safety and mobility. Connected Vehicle technology can also improve the efficiency and reliability of operating autonomous vehicles, even though the latter could operate with their on board sensors and without communication. Unfortunately, most modeling approaches in the literature do not distinguish between connectivity and automation. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive acceleration framework to distinguish between these two concepts while modeling this new driving environment. The authors previously presented a framework that utilizes different models with different assumptions to simulate several vehicle types with different communication capabilities (1) This paper presents a stability analysis of this framework for different market penetration rates of connected and autonomous vehicles. The stability analysis reveals that connected and autonomous vehicles can improve string stability. Moreover, automation can be expected to be more effective in preventing shockwave formation and propagation