Emulation of a highway bottleneck using leader-follower formation control

A bottleneck on a highway is a daily occurring phenomenon. Everyday car accidents, long queues and stop-and-go waves are introduced by the driver's behavior. In this work, an effective control algorithm for emulating a bottleneck situation on a highway is presented using a set of mobile robots that can be used to educate young control engineers. We use a combination of i) an in-line leader-follower formation and ii) a formation with two followers for one leader i.e. a triangular formation. Both formations are implemented using distance and angle measurements from image processing algorithms and speed measurements from optical encoders. A cascade PI-P controller is used to stabilize the system. The challenge of the current implementation stands in the fact that there is no communication between the robots.