Comparative Analysis on the Effect of Triangular and Gaussian Membership Functions on Fuzzy Controlled Vehicle Platoon

Abstract

Fuzzy controlled vehicle platoon system provides a simplified yet robust approach to achieving platoon string stability and uniform inter-vehicular gap keeping in autonomous vehicle platoon. Most truck platoon is affected by delay of platoons which causes trucks not to maintain a constant inter-vehicular gap and speed, unknown uncertainties which may result in crash or accident. However, the fuzzification and defuzzification method adopted affects the final platoon characteristics of the platoon to a large extent, while also determining velocity stability timing, although researcher select a fuzzification/defuzzification method based on comfort, familiarity or simplicity. This paper proposes to compare the effect of fuzzification and defuzzification method on vehicle platoon, to provide evidence on the selection criteria and how it affects the controlled system. Simulation was done in MATLAB environment, and the fuzzy control approach was applied to a 3-vehicle autonomous platoon, which was a combination of triangular/centroid, triangular/bisector, triangular/mean with Gaussian/centroid, Gaussian/bisector and Gaussian/mean of maxima under the same platoon scenario. It was found that the best performing combination is the triangular/centroid with 4.44 secs velocity stability for vehicle V3, and 1.91 secs distance stability for follower vehicle, when compared to Gaussian/MoM with 79.88 secs velocity stability V3, and 85.89 secs for follower vehicle which is the worst performing combination.