Truck Platoon Control Considering Heterogeneous Vehicles

This paper presents control algorithms enabling autonomous heterogeneous trucks to drive in platoons. Heterogeneous trucks imply that the hardware information (e.g., truck length, break, accelerator, or engine) of a truck may be distinct from that of another truck. A platoon is defined as a collection of trucks where a manually driven truck (leader truck) is followed by several automatically controlled following trucks. This paper is novel in presenting the longitudinal control of a truck platoon, as the trucks move along a curved lane as well as a straight lane. For a lateral maneuver, this paper proposes making every autonomous truck keep following the leader’s waypoints while maintaining a designated distance from its predecessor truck. This paper develops both a lateral maneuver and speed control considering a platoon of heterogeneous trucks. The efficiency of the proposed approach is verified using simulations.