Control of platoons of heavy-duty vehicles using a delay-based spacing policy∗∗This research is funded by the FP7 Programme of the European Union through the project COMPANION.

Abstract

The formation of groups of heavy-duty vehicles driving at close inter-vehicular distances (known as a platoon) reduces the fuel consumption due to a decreased aerodynamic drag and has the potential to increase traffic flow. This paper motivates the use of a novel spacing policy, which specifies the desired distance between vehicles as a function of their states. Particularly, a delay-based spacing policy is introduced, which guarantees that all vehicles in the group follow the same velocity profile in space. It is shown that the proposed spacing policy offers advantages in the platoon control for non-constant reference velocities, which are common when driving over hilly terrain. A controller is designed to achieve this spacing policy, hereby exploiting an analysis of the vehicle dynamics in the spatial domain rather than time domain. Moreover, the controller is shown to attenuate the effect of disturbances as they propagate through the platoon. Simulations are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed spacing policy and controller.

Collaborative Platooning of Automated Vehicles Using Variable Time-Gaps

“…The first is the design of a string-stable controller that is capable of tracking a multi-dimensional target profile (both time-gap and velocity) at each vehicle. The technique that we use to obtain the controller is based on feedback linearization [12], and the controller itself can be considered as a generalization of the one presented in [9] in a high level sense, wherein space (not time) is used as the independent variable. As mentioned above, the basis for such design is the Eulerian view of the system that permits us to connect the safety of flows (which must hold at all locations) with the idea of changing flows via traffic shaping (also as a function of location).…”

“…However, as we indicated in our motivating example, events such as lane drops and mergers require a platoon to be at a specific operating points at a particular location. The first work that we are aware of that considers the Eulerian viewpoint is [9], which introduces a constant time-gap policy. They show that a platoon following a constant time-gap policy can be string stable.…”

How to ensure control of cooperative vehicle and truck platoons using Meaningful Human Control

“…When considering automated vehicles, and especially when platooning, much existing research is focused on aspects relating to technical vehicle control and the interactions between platooning vehicles to perform optimally. Different approaches have focused on platoon stability (Barooah et al 2009;Ploeg et al 2014), while other have focused on the effect on traffic performance through improved intra-vehicle homogeneity (Guo and Yue 2011;Ploeg 2014;Shaw and Hedrick 2007) and vehicle spacing policies (Besselink and Johansson 2015;Dehlia Willemsen et al 2020;Naus et al 2010). The topic of human control for automated driving systems in which a human does not exert operational control is not broadly considered, at least not from the perspective taken with MHC (Beckers et al 2019).…”