Large steps are being taken by the industry and R&D organizations in automated driving technology development, as well as in setting up appropriate scenario-based safety assessment methods. In this paper a concept framework is proposed for a very specific group of vehicles: trucks in a platoon enabled by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. The basis is formed by previously proposed scenario-based assessment methods for individual automated driving vehicles. These methods however do not consider the inter-vehicle communication component. It is shown how V2V communication interconnects vehicles in a system-of-systems, and how to include V2V communication in the scenario description. The paper also provides a vision to answer the basic question whether safety assessment should consider the platoon as a whole, or the individual vehicle in the platoon.
We study a transportation problem where two heavy-duty trucks travel across the national highway from separate origins to destinations, subject to individual deadline constraints. Our objective is to minimize their total fuel consumption by jointly optimizing path planning, speed planning, and platooning configuration. Such a two-truck platooning problem is pervasive in practice yet challenging to solve due to hard deadline constraints and enormous platooning configurations to consider. We first leverage a unique problem structure to significantly simplify platooning optimization and present a…
Simulation-based traffic impact assessment studies of advanced technologies such as truck platooning need to be carried out to ascertain their benefits for traffic efficiency, safety and environment. To reduce uncertainty in the results of such simulation-based studies, the same simulation studies can be performed in different simulation software. Many traffic simulation software packages (Aimsun, SymuVia, Vissim, SUMO) are currently available for traffic impact assessment of new technologies such as truckplatooning. However, to fully model and simulate the functionalities of such advanced tec…
Connectivity-enabled automation of distributed control systems allow for better anticipation of system disturbances and better prediction of the effects of actuator limitations on individual agents when incorporating a model. Automated convoy of heavy-duty trucks in the form of platooning is one such application designed to maintain close gaps between trucks to exploit drafting benefits and improve fuel economy, and has traditionally been handled with classically-designed connected and adaptive cruise control (CACC). This paper is motivated by demonstrated limitations of such a control strateg…
This paper studies a multi-fleet platoon coordination system in transport networks that deploy hubs to form trucks into platoons. The trucks belong to different fleets that are interested in increasing their profits by platooning across fleets. The profit of each fleet incorporates platooning rewards and costs for waiting at hubs. Each truck has a fixed route and a waiting time budget to spend at the hubs along its route. To ensure that all fleets are willing to participate in the system, we develop a cross-fleet Pareto-improving coordination strategy that guarantees higher fleet profits than …
As the automotive industry is developing autonomous driving systems and vehicular networks, attention to truck platooning has increased as a way to reduce costs (fuel consumption) and improve efficiency in the highway. Recent research in this area has focused mainly on the aerodynamics, network stability, and longitudinal control of platoons. However, the system aspects (e.g., platoon coordination) are still not well explored. In this paper, we formulate a platooning coordination problem and study whether trucks waiting at an initial location (station) should wait for a platoon to arrive in or…
Human-leading truck platooning systems have been proposed to leverage the benefits of both human supervision and vehicle autonomy. Equipped with human guidance and autonomous technology, human-leading truck platooning systems are more versatile to handle uncertain traffic conditions than fully automated platooning systems. This paper presents a novel distributed stochastic model predictive control (DSMPC) design for a human-leading heavy-duty truck platoon. The proposed DSMPC design integrates the stochastic driver behavior model of the human-driven leader truck with a distributed formation co…
We model a platooning system including trucks and a third-party service provider that performs platoon coordination, distributes the platooning profit within platoons, and charges the trucks in exchange for its services. This paper studies one class of pricing rules, where the third-party service provider keeps part of the platooning profit each time a platoon is formed. Furthermore, we propose a platoon coordination solution based on distributed model predictive control in which the pricing rule is integrated. To evaluate the effect of the pricing on the platooning system, we perform a simula…
In this paper, empirical data from the literature are used to develop general power models that capture the impact of a vehicle position, in a platoon of homogeneous vehicles, and the distance gap to its lead (and following) vehicle on its drag coefficient. These models are developed for light duty vehicles, buses, and heavy duty trucks. The models were fit using a constrained optimization framework to fit a general power function using either direct drag force or fuel measurements. The model is then used to extrapolate the empirical measurements to a wide range of vehicle distance gaps within…
This paper considers the problem of hub-based platoon coordination for a large-scale transport system, where trucks have individual utility functions to optimize. An event-triggered distributed model predictive control method is proposed to solve the optimal scheduling of waiting times at hubs for individual trucks. In this distributed framework, trucks are allowed to decide their waiting times independently and only limited information is shared between trucks. Both the predicted reward gained from platooning and the predicted cost for waiting at hubs are included in each truck's utility func…
Truck drivers are required to stop and rest with a certain regularity according to the driving and rest time regulations, also called Hours-of-Service (HoS) regulations. This paper studies the problem of optimally forming platoons when considering realistic HoS regulations. In our problem, trucks have fixed routes in a transportation network and can wait at hubs along their routes to form platoons with others while fulfilling the driving and rest time constraints. We propose a distributed decision-making scheme where each truck controls its waiting times at hubs based on the predicted schedule…
We consider a hub-based platoon coordination problem in which vehicles arrive at a hub according to an independent and identically distributed stochastic arrival process. The vehicles wait at the hub, and a platoon coordinator, at each time-step, decides whether to release the vehicles from the hub in the form of a platoon or wait for more vehicles to arrive. The platoon release time problem is modeled as a stopping rule problem wherein the objective is to maximize the average platooning benefit of the vehicles located at the hub and there is a cost of having vehicles waiting at the hub. We sh…
Cooperative driving, enabled by communication between automated vehicle systems, is expected to significantly contribute to transportation safety and efficiency. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) and platooning are two of the main cooperative driving applications that are currently under study. These applications offer significant improvements over current advanced driver assistant systems such as adaptive cruise control (ACC). The primary motivation of CACC and Platooning is to reduce traffic congestion and improve traffic flow, traffic throughput, and highway capacity. These applica…
We consider the platoon matching problem for a set of trucks with the same origin, but different destinations. It is assumed that the vehicles benefit from traveling in a platoon for instance through reduced fuel consumption. The vehicles belong to different fleet owners and their strategic interaction is modeled as a non-cooperative game where the vehicle actions are their departure times. Each truck has a preferred departure time and its utility function is defined as the difference between its benefit from platooning and the cost of deviating from its preferred departure time. We show that …
ACCESS Linnaeus Centre and the Department of Automatic Control, School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology(ACCESS林奈斯中心,电气工程学院自动控制系,瑞典皇家理工学院);KTH Royal Institute of Technology(瑞典皇家理工学院);Scania CV AB(斯堪尼亚商用车公司)
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is a fundamental connected vehicle application that extends Adaptive Cruise Control by exploiting vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. CACC is a crucial ingredient for numerous autonomous vehicle functionalities including platooning, distributed route management, etc. Unfortunately, malicious V2V communications can subvert CACC, leading to string instability and road accidents. In this paper, we develop a novel resiliency infrastructure, RACCON, for detecting and mitigating V2V attacks on CACC. RACCON uses machine learning to develop an on-board pr…
OpenConvoy: Universal Platform for Real-World Testing of Cooperative Driving Systems
College of Engineering;Computer Science University of Central Florida Orlando, United States https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1826-373X;College of Electrical;Computer Engineering University of Central Florida Orlando, United States;Computer Science University of Central Florida Orlando, United States