This study provides a new mode of transport in urban areas inhabited by many elderly people. In some of these areas, public transport systems are inadequate and parking spaces for private cars are in short supply. In addition, the decline of shopping malls around these areas makes life inconvenient for the inhabitants. Here we introduce a car-sharing service of vehicle-following personal vehicles along streets in residential areas inhabited by elderly people. This study achieves a vehicle control function with high reliability, high accuracy, and ease of handling by a measuring device that uses a draw wire encoder. First, we consider background issues pertaining to transports and residential streets in Japan. Next, we give an introduction on vehicle-following technologies we have developed. We then describe a measuring device that uses a draw wire encoder for the proposed vehicle-following service, as well as the underlying control algorithms implemented by the measuring device. Finally, we report the results of experiments conducted on small electric vehicles (EVs). The results verify that the proposed device and vehicle-following control algorithms enable vehicles to drive with vehicle-to-vehicle distance errors of approximately ±10 cm.
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