Connected Vehicle Experiments on Virtual Rings: Unveiling Bistable Behavior

The nonlinear dynamics of vehicles on a virtual ring is investigated. A vehicle chain is considered where a connected automated vehicle (CAV) driving at the head of the chain receives the state of a connected human-driven vehicle (CHV) at the tail. The controller of the CAV is constructed in a way that the CHV is projected in front of it; this closes a virtual ring. We construct the corresponding mathematical model and analyze the effect of nonlinearities with numerical continuation. Then, we present real car experiments with two CHVs and one CAV. Both the theoretical results and the experiments show bistable behavior for certain control parameters. The results provide an essential support for parameter tuning during the control design of CAVs.