Impact on Platooning of Autonomous Vehicles using Macro to Micro simulations

Abstract

Social costs increase as traffic problems continue. Driverless vehicles are attracting attention as a way to overcome this issue. Many said that fully autonomous driving is not a distant future. As one of the autonomous vehicle operations, vehicle platooning has been paid attention. Therefore, this study analyzes the effects of vehicle platooning on the road network. As a large-scale network, Jeju island, one of the cities in Korea was selected to test the platooning arrangement. A macro simulation was developed and calibrated based on the collected traffic counts, and then the network and assigned paths were imported to the micro simulation, which is capable of forming the platoon. The analysis was conducted by changing various parameters of the platooning vehicle. According to the investigation, it can be seen that as the market share of autonomous vehicles increases, delays decrease, and speed increases. Traffic efficiency was improved through platooning in general. It is expected that the results of this study can be used as primary data to develop an optimal traffic flow management strategy for cluster operation.