Stability analysis of a chain of non-identical vehicles under bilateral cruise control

Bilateral cruise control (BCC) suppresses traffic flow instabilities. Previously, for simplicity of analysis, vehicles in BCC traffic flow were assumed to be identical, i.e., using the same gains for control. In this study, we analyze the stability of an inhomogeneous vehicular chain in which the gains used by different vehicles are not the same. Not unexpectedly, mathematical analysis becomes more difficult, and leads to a quadratic eigenvalue problem. We study several different cases, and shows that a chain of vehicles under bilateral cruise control is stable even when the vehicles do not all have the same control system properties. Numerical simulations validate the analysis.