Stability analysis of an improved car-following model accounting for the driver’s characteristics and automation

Abstract This study presents an improved car-following model accounting for the driver’s characteristics and automation for longitudinal driving. We attempt to reveal some features of driving behavior, which drivers make decision in consideration with delayed decision and aggressiveness as well as the automated controller. The delayed decision and aggressiveness of drivers are represented via the integral term with kernel function and headway perturbation, and the automated controller consists of proportional–derivative element. Stability analysis is performed both driver’s characteristics and controller gains adopting frequency domain sweeping method. Stability regions of proposed model show the relationships between driver’s characteristics and automated controller. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and interpret the relation between driver’s characteristics and automated controller.