Self-Organizing Headway Control for Drag-Efficient Heavy-Duty Vehicle Platooning

Although the benefits of platoons of heavy-duty vehicles in terms of air drag reduction and fuel/energy savings are well recognized, uncertainties and heterogeneities in the vehicles composing the platoon can degrade such ideal benefits and even compromise inter-vehicle safety. This work proposes a system-wide platooning strategy for heavy-duty vehicles that accounts for uncertainty, heterogeneity, air drag reduction and safety. The strategy is based on two key principles: adaptation and self-organization. Adaptation aims at canceling uncertainty by making the vehicles homogenize to desirable reference dynamics. Self-organization aims at adjusting the inter-vehicle headway to increase fuel/energy savings via drag reduction, while accounting for (un)safety due to communication/actuation delay. The two principles are complementary: adaptation without self-organization would fail to attain substantial drag reduction, while self-organization without adaptation would result in reduced safety due to the different vehicle responses to acceleration commands. A mathematical formulation for these principles is given, and their effectiveness is validated in a SUMO-Veins co-simulation environment and with real-world data from the Heavy Heavy-Duty Diesel Truck (HHDDT) driving cycle of the California Air Resources Board.