ABSTRACT
The capability of vehicles to communicate wirelessly provides an opportunity for innovations in the transport sector. Platooning of vehicles is one of the widely studied topics in the research community. Vehicle platooning aims to increase the capacity of roads, improve traffic safety, and reduce fuel consumption. The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the subject of vehicle dynamics on modelling and control aspects and observe the behavior with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication constraints. The proposed algorithms are presented in general form and are applicable to any vehicle.
Most of the work on platooning investigates the control of vehicles in pairs based on the concept of look-ahead platooning. This chapter emphasizes the design of proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers and model predictive control (MPC) based on a combination of constant distance (CD) and constant headway time (CHT) policies to operate a heavy-duty vehicle platoon. In addition to basic cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), the controller is tested and verified for carrying out splitting and merging maneuvers.58
Furthermore, the controller performance is analyzed with V2V communication constraints between the vehicles. Computer simulations were carried out to test the effectiveness of the controller. MATLAB, VISSIM, and a network simulator (NS3) are combined to form an integrated simulation. The platooning operations and merging and splitting maneuvers are replicated as realistically as possible while considering the effects of neighboring V2V equipped traffic. The speed, acceleration, and inter-vehicular distance profiles of the platoon were observed. It is evident from the profiles that the followers track the header vehicle and maintain a constant distance and time gap in the presence of frequent speed variations by the header vehicle.
