A strategy for optimisation of cooperative platoon formation

This paper presents a direction for cooperative vehicle platoon formation. To enhance traffic safety, increase lane capacities and reduce fuel consumption, vehicles can be organised into platoons with the objective of maximising the travel distance that platoons stay intact. Towards this end, this work evaluates a proposed strategy which assigns vehicles to platoons by solving an optimisation problem. A linear model for assigning vehicles to appropriate platoons when they enter the highway is formulated. Simulation results demonstrate that lane capacity can be increased effectively when platooning operation is used.