Development and Evaluation of a Unified Integrated Platoon Control System Architecture

Abstract

Vehicle platooning has become a topic of substantial interest for development of safer and more efficient means of transportation. It is described as a string of connected autonomous vehicles traveling closely, maintaining certain inter-vehicular distances at a set speed boosting the road capacity, improving safety and lowering adverse environmental significance. In this study, several platooning concepts addressed in previous literature are revealed. A unified integrated platoon control architecture is constructed, employing the aforementioned concepts. This architecture contemplates a generic decoupled longitudinal and lateral engine-based vehicle model incorporating the powertrain dynamics. Several control algorithms are investigated, optimized and compared to manage the longitudinal inter-vehicular spacing distances of a formed platoon, as well as the lateral platoon motion tracking. The superior longitudinal controller in terms of spacing error convergence, velocity tracking and acceptable control effort, in addition to the outperformed lateral controller for its accurate lane change tracking and lower computational cost are promoted to be tested in the integrated architecture. Simulations are visualized using the Multi-Robot Systems Intelligent Transportation Systems (MRS-ITS) visualization tool for further realization of the results.