Human Factors for Vehicle Platooning: A Review

Vehicle platooning (a group of two or more consecutive connected autonomous vehicles that travel simultaneously at the same velocity with a short inter-vehicular distance based on vehicle to vehicle communication) has significant potential to advance traffic, including enhancing travel safety, improving traffic efficacy and decreasing energy consumption. Much focus has been put on developing machine learning-based autonomous driving systems. However, the interactions between humans and the autonomous driving system have not been widely studied, although understanding the human factor is critical as that can cause human errors and potential accidents. Besides, vehicle platooning introduces a new cooperative driving paradigm for drivers. From such circumstances may emerge a new pattern for human interaction with the vehicle platoons. This study presents a semisystematic methodology to review existing studies of human factors in vehicle platoons. Among the human factors, user acceptance and trust significantly impact the sustained development of autonomous driving and concerned user satisfaction. Achieving higher user satisfaction can present business advantages for vehicle platooning service providers in the future. In this paper, the human-vehicle platoon interaction is classified into three groups: pedestrians, other drivers and in-platoon driver interaction. Then the research gaps are highlighted for the field.