Connected automated vehicles have shown great potential to improve the efficiency of transportation systems in terms of passenger comfort, fuel economy, stability of driving behavior and mitigation of traffic congestions. Yet, to deploy these vehicles and leverage their benefits, the underlying algorithms must ensure their safe operation. In this paper, we address the safety of connected cruise control strategies for longitudinal car following using control barrier function (CBF) theory. In particular, we consider various safety measures such as minimum distance, time headway and time to conflict, and provide a formal analysis of these measures through the lens of CBFs. Additionally, motivated by how stability charts facilitate stable controller design, we derive safety charts for existing connected cruise controllers to identify safe choices of controller parameters. Finally, we combine the analysis of safety measures and the corresponding stability charts to synthesize safety-critical connected cruise controllers using CBFs. We verify our theoretical results by numerical simulations.

翻译：网联自动驾驶车辆在提升交通系统效率方面展现出巨大潜力，包括改善乘客舒适性、燃油经济性、驾驶行为稳定性以及缓解交通拥堵。然而，要部署这些车辆并发挥其优势，底层算法必须确保其安全运行。本文利用控制障碍函数理论研究了纵向跟车场景中网联巡航控制策略的安全性。具体而言，我们考虑了最小距离、车头时距和冲突时间等多种安全度量，并通过控制障碍函数的形式化视角对这些度量进行了严谨分析。此外，受稳定性图表便于设计稳定控制器这一思路的启发，我们针对现有网联巡航控制器推导了安全性图表，以识别控制器参数的安全选择。最后，我们结合安全度量分析与相应的稳定性图表，利用控制障碍函数综合设计了安全关键的网联巡航控制器。通过数值仿真验证了理论结果。