An interaction model for a local approach to vehicle platoons

Platoon system is a set of vehicles that move together without any material connection while keeping a predefined configuration. This paper focuses on column platoon configurations, where vehicles are placed one behind the other. There are two main goals for this paper. The first goal of the paper is to propose a local approach of platooning where each vehicle is considered an independent and autonomous entity able to compute its references (speed and orientation) based only on its perceptions. A platoon vehicle computes its references in a local frame. The second goal of this paper is to show the effect of the inertial force produced by the local frame. To assess the importance of this inertial force, a comparison is made between the behaviour of the vehicle when the inertial force is taken into account and when it is not.