Safety in the Face of Uncertainty

This article proposes a safety check extension to Adaptive Cruise Control systems where the critical headway time is estimated in real-time. This critical headway time estimate enables automated reaction to crisis circumstances such as when a preceding vehicle performs an emergency brake. We introduce a method for critical headway approximation that can handle uncertainty in vehicle state, vehicle behaviour and communication in real-time. We validate our method using Monte Carlo simulations where we simulate emergency braking situations to ascertain the safe headway.