EU ENSEMBLE Project: Reference Design and Implementation of the Platooning Support Function

Abstract

Platooning is a cooperative driving technology for driving in a longitudinal formation. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is the key enabling technology. Platooning is considered to be a closed application between well-known participants that use V2V data for their operation. For the deployment of platooning, multi-brand, i.e. interoperable, solutions are paramount. To achieve this, the European ENSEMBLE (ENabling SafE Multi-Brand pLatooning for Europe) project has been conducted. In this project, multi-brand specifications have been harmonized to a set of common specifications and requirements for a generic Platooning Support Function (PSF). Part of the specifications is a common interaction protocol, which also encompasses security features. A reference design has been developed to initially check the specifications. It consists of a detailed design of the common functionality and includes software and communication sub-system hardware prototypes. This reference design has also been used as benchmark for brand-specific implementations, e.g. in communication plug tests. Daimler Truck included the reference design directly in their PSF implementation, which gave the opportunity to continuously develop the reference design during the project. In this paper, the ‘final’ reference design is described as implemented in the Daimler truck, which took part in the verification, validation and demonstration of multi-brand platooning together with six other truck manufacturers.