METHOD FOR CONTROLLING THE SPACING BETWEEN ADJACENT MOVING TRACK- BOUND VEHICLES OF A TRANSPORT SYSTEM

摘要

1377977 Vehicle control MESSERSCHMITT-BOLKOW-BLOHM GmbH 22 Nov 1971 [2 Dec 1970] 54133/71 Heading B7N [Also in Division H4] In an arrangement for controlling the spacing of two vehicles moving on a common path to a preselected value the required speed of the second vehicle is modified by a factor value xd = distance between the vehicles; a = constant; V 2s = required speed for second vehicle; V 1I = actual speed of first vehicle. Each vehicle carries a transmitter 1 and receiver 2, operating at 500 MHz, which are coupled to a VHF transmission line 3 extending along the vehicle track and the coupling leads 7, 8, to the conductor 20 of the line are joined by a capacitor which resonates with the conductor inductance to form a blocking circuit which allows each vehicle to transmit only to its rear and receive from ahead. Unit 15 supplies voltage V 1I which is a tunction of actual vehicle speed and this is applied via voltage frequency converter 13 to unit 14 which frequency modulates the transmitter 1 with the actual speed information and this signal is transmitted via line 3 to a vehicle to the rear. In this latter vehicle the signal having an amplitude which is a function of line loss between vehicles is received in receiver 2 and applied via a frequency demodulation circuit 17 and frequency voltage converter 18 to subtract circuit 4 which is also supplied with the value of speed requested V 2S from store 24. The subtract circuit supplies an output (V 2S - V 1I ). The output from the receiver is also supplied to rectifier 23 which is arranged to provide the output eSP-axd/SP where a is the line attenuator constant and xd is the distance between the vehicles. This is applied with the output from the subtract unit 4 to multiply unit 5 which provides the factor V 2F . This factor is used in unit 6 to modify the required value of speed V 2F stored in unit 24 and the modified value is used in speed regulator 22 to control the vehicle speed. The conductor 19 of the transmission line can be the neutral traction supply return circuit and the conductor 20 can be of iron.