Abstract
Automated driving in urban traffic requires extensive information from the surroundings. The most promising approach to facilitate automated driving in mixed traffic is platooning of connected and automated vehicles (CAV). In this research, we investigate a human-leading strategy (HL) by which CAVs drive in platoons with the CAV leading the platoon driven by a human. We thoroughly formulate the problem of managing CAV platoons by the HL strategy, systematically model the platoon dynamics and the traffic system, as well as propose two approaches to implement this strategy. By conducting experiments in a simulation framework that combines the traffic and the communication network, the implementation of the HL strategy is evaluated with the consideration of travel time, automated driving experience, and communication reliability. The simulation results revealed that the HL strategy makes it feasible for CAVs to drive in automated mode in an urban mixed traffic network, while its performance relies on the CAV penetration rate and communication reliability. In addition, the results suggest that the performance of the HL strategy can be significantly improved by approaches that allow uninterrupted platooning and result in stable platoon dynamics.
Highlights
W ITH the rapid development of vehicular automation technology in recent years, a vast proportion of vehicles have SAE level 2 or higher automation capabilities [1]
The results section is divided into three subsections: the first part presents the speed and time headway trajectory of involved connected automated vehicles (CAV) during platoon dynamics, the second part explains the performance of the communication process within the platoon dynamics, and the last part evaluates the performance of the human-leading strategy (HL) strategy regarding different scenarios with the consideration of communication reliability
We thoroughly modeled the problem of managing CAV platoons in an urban road network, proposed the HL strategy and two distributed approaches for implementing the HL strategy, proposed a decentralized communication scheme to apply the HL strategy, as well as evaluated the HL strategy with the consideration of travel time, automated driving experience, and communication reliability in a simulated traffic system
Summary
W ITH the rapid development of vehicular automation technology in recent years, a vast proportion of vehicles have SAE level 2 or higher automation capabilities [1]. Two strategies proposed by the PATH project are considered to be the most promising: (1) the managed lane strategy (ML) in which the CAVs are instructed to drive on a dedicated lane to increase the opportunity of forming platoons [15]; (2) equipping conventional vehicles with vehicle awareness devices (VAD) so that they can perform as CAV platoon leaders [16] These strategies have inherent defects in terms of their application in urban road networks. With respect to the aforementioned research gaps, the key contributions of this paper are: 1) systematically formulating the problem of managing CAV platoons by the HL strategy in an urban road network, with the consideration of improving the traffic efficiency (i.e. to reduce travel time delay) and the automated driving experience of CAV drivers (i.e. to produce long and stable automated rides).
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