Situation-aware Switching of the Communication Topology in Heterogeneous Platooning Applications

Abstract

Communication based controllers for platooning are often designed for a homogeneous vehicle composition in a nominal driving situation. However, in real applications, platoons will comprise different vehicles and, thus, be heterogeneous, which increases the requirements for safe operation. Furthermore, controllers which are designed for the nominal cruising state can not necessarily cope with external disturbances such as the cut-in of a foreign vehicle or an emergency braking of the whole platoon. In this paper, we present a concept of switching the communication topology according to the current driving situation in a heterogeneous vehicle platoon. Examined driving situations are the cut-in of a foreign vehicle and an emergency braking. For these situations, we show that varying the communication topology of an otherwise unchanged controller can prevent collisions within the platoon. Furthermore, it is shown that improvements, e. g. regarding the braking distance of the leading vehicle, can be achieved by taking the different vehicle types and their order into account. For both situations, possible solutions by switching the communication topology are discussed and evaluated in the simulation framework Plexe.