Multiple-Lane Vehicle Platooning based on a Multi-Agent Distributed Model Predictive Control Strategy

Vehicle platooning became an interesting topic in the last years, many researchers and practitioners from the academia and industry trying to develop new theories and design appropriate control methods and communication methodologies in order to bring this concept as fast as possible on the roads. Since vehicles drive on multi-lane roads and highways, the subsequent paradigm was to treat vehicles as swarms, i.e., groups of vehicles that travel closely together on different lanes and are electronically connected. A step forward towards this new concept would be the design of multiple-lane platoons. As such, this paper proposes a multi-agent distributed model predictive control strategy for the longitudinal coordination of the vehicles in individual platoons and a classical PI control algorithm for the lateral control of each vehicle in the platoon w.r.t. its neighbors. The simulation results obtained in Matlab/Simulink and the performance analysis prove that the concept is viable.