Platoon-Level Control of Automatic Vehicles’ Platooning for Larger Traffic Throughput

Control methodology for the platooning of automatic driving vehicles is presented in this paper. The currently proposed controller for the platooning has focused on keeping inter-vehicle distance, where the platooning is conducted by control of each vehicle. But this strategy has difficulty of conducting transient processes, such as merging and separating in dense traffic condition. As solution to the above problem, platoonlevel control is proposed to be placed over vehicle-level control. A hierarchical control architecture including the platoon-level control is proposed, and a control procedure for conducting the transient processes of merging and separating is concretely described. The proposed platooning controller is evaluated by simulation and clarified to be contributive to higher traffic throughput, lower fuel consumption and better ride comfort.