Trade-off between safety, mobility and energy in automated vehicles

media release: The Wisconsin Energy Institute helps facilitate a seminar series focused on UW–Madison expertise in sustainable energy. The series provides students and the public with the opportunity to explore sustainable energy solutions, learn about the challenges facing sustainable energy, and interact with experts from across campus.

Xiaopeng Li, professor of civil and environmental engineering

Abstract:

Automated vehicle (AV) following control impacts traffic safety, mobility, and energy. We investigated a parsimonious linear AV following model that captures the first-order parameters on the safety, mobility, and energy consumption aspects. The string stability results indicate that the minimum headway may be hardly achieved due to stability concerns, and practical AV control needs to either allow a longer headway to trade for string-stable traffic with less energy consumption or conversely accommodate moderate string instability (or allowing for some extra energy consumption) to trade for a smaller AV following headway. These findings are verified by field experiments with production vehicles. Vehicles of different powertrains are compared.

This seminar is offered online via Zoom webinar, and registration is required. You can register once and receive access to all seven Fall 2025 seminars using this registration link:

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5CGVsuRWSG27hgWKjWNNRw

Catch up on past seminars

Miss out on attending a past seminar or want to rewatch one you were particularly interested in? You can find all of our past live-streamed seminars on the Sustainable Energy Seminar Series playlist on our YouTube channel.