Quick and Autonomous Platoon Maintenance in Vehicle Dynamics For Distributed Vehicle Platoon Networks

Abstract

Platoon systems, as a type of adaptive cruise control systems,will play a significant role to improve travel experience androadway safety. The stability of a platoon system is crucialso that each vehicle maintains a safety distance from itsproceeding vehicle and can take necessary actions to avoidcollisions. However, current centralized platoon maintenancemethod cannot meet this requirement. We suggest to use adecentralized platoon maintenance method, in which eachvehicle communicates with its neighbor vehicles and self-determines its own velocity. However, a vehicle needs toknow its distance from its preceding vehicle to determineits velocity, which is unavailable in vehicle communicationdisconnection caused by vehicle dynamics (i.e., node joinsand departures). Thus, a formidable challenge is: how torecover the platoon quickly in vehicle dynamics even when thedistance information is unavailable? To handle this challenge,we first profile a succeeding vehicle’s velocity to minimizethe time to recover the connectivity hole with its precedingvehicle and find that the profiles are almost the same at thebeginning regardless of its current velocity and distance to itspreceding vehicle. Accordingly, we devise a strategy, in whicha succeeding vehicle uses its stored common velocity profilewhen it is disconnected from its preceding vehicle and thenadjusts its velocity once the connection is built. Experimentalresults from simulation show the efficiency and effectivenessof our decentralized platoon maintenance method.