In this paper, a unified multi‐vehicle formation control framework for intelligent and connected vehicles (ICVs) that can apply to multiple traffic scenarios is proposed. In the one‐dimensional scenario, different formation geometries are analysed, and the interlaced structure is mathematically modellised to improve driving safety while making full use of the lane capacity. The assignment problem for vehicles, and target positions is solved using Hungarian algorithm to improve the flexibility of the method in multiple scenarios. In the two‐dimensional scenario, an improved virtual platoon method is proposed to transfer the complex two‐dimensional passing problem to the one‐dimensional formation control problem based on the idea of rotation projection. Besides, the vehicle regrouping method is proposed to connect the two scenarios. Simulation results prove that the proposed multi‐vehicle formation control framework can apply to multiple typical scenarios, and have better performance than existing methods.

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Coordinated decision making and control can improve traffic efficiency while guaranteeing driving safety. This paper proposes a formation control method for multiple Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) on multi-lane roads. A bi-level planning framework is proposed to smoothly and effectively switch the structure of the formation in different scenarios. The relative coordinate system is established and the conflict-free relative paths are planned in the upper level. Multi-stage trajectory planning and tracking are performed in the lower level. Case study is conducted to verify the function of the proposed method and simulation in the lane-drop bottleneck scenario is carried out under different traffic volume. Numerical results indicate that the proposed method can improve traffic efficiency at high traffic volume.

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Multi-lane roads are typical scenarios in the real-world traffic system. Vehicles usually have preference on lanes according to their routes and destinations. Few of the existing studies looks into the problem of controlling vehicles to drive on their desired lanes. This paper proposes a formation control method that considers vehicles' preference on different lanes. The bi-level formation control framework is utilized to plan collision-free motion for vehicles, where relative target assignment and path planning are performed in the upper level, and trajectory planning and tracking are performed in the lower level. The collision-free multi-vehicle path planning problem considering lane preference is decoupled into two sub problems: calculating assignment list with non-decreasing cost and planning collision-free paths according to given assignment result. The Conflict-based Searching (CBS) method is utilized to plan collision-free paths for vehicles based on given assignment results. Case study is conducted and simulations are carried out in a three-lane road scenario. The results indicate that the proposed formation control method significantly reduces congestion and improves traffic efficiency at high traffic volumes, compared to the rule-based method.