A Platoon Control Method based on Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Vehicles in Traffic Flow

Abstract

The increasing number of vehicles are one of the causes of accidents, exhaust pollution and traffic congestion in urban areas. These pressing problems force human to looking for the approach for a higher car flow on highways in less time and with fewer accidents. In that context, one of the approach growing roadway capacity is to make a car/truck grouping moving in a strings in order to follow short distances between the members of the platoon. This approach ensures the simultaneous deceleration or acceleration of all cars in the string. This work gives a control strategy for Cooperative adaptive cruise control (Cooperative ACC) in a platoon through a performance evaluation by simulations. The main goal of platoon control is to stay the desired spacing from front cars of the string using the constant time headway (CTH) policy while keeping the same velocity with the other cars. The results of the numerical example have demonstrated the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach for cars platoon.