Dynamics Platooning Model and Protocols for Self-Driving Vehicles

Cooperative driving has caught the interest of many research centers around the world as it introduced a solution to many problems in traffic and especially the reduction of accidents. One of the cooperative driving applications is vehicle platooning, which has proven its ability to increase road capacity and decrease fuel consumption. As the platoon has to have a rules of organization to form and split safely, this paper introduces a dynamic platoon model and protocols with different control techniques applied on different sub-systems in the model. Additionally, the basic platooning maneuvers are governed by applying certain protocols to organize the formation of platoon in a safe manner. Several tests on the platooning model and maneuvering controls have been performed from real-life scenarios and using real-vehicle data and a software in the loop to verify the results and evaluate the performance of the proposed approaches. The results prove an acceptable performance of the control techniques applied on the platooning model.