Distributed Urban Platooning towards High Flexibility, Adaptability, and Stability

Area of Science:

• Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
• Autonomous Driving
• Network Protocols

Background:

• Vehicle platooning offers benefits like increased road capacity and fuel savings by reducing inter-vehicle distances.
• Existing European platooning projects primarily focus on highway truck platooning, facing challenges when adapted to complex urban road networks.
• Urban environments present unique obstacles including intricate road layouts, traffic signals, frequent lane changes, and communication interference due to high vehicle density.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel Distributed Urban Platooning Protocol (DUPP) designed for high mobility and flexibility in decentralized urban platooning.
• To ensure DUPP operates efficiently without disrupting essential safety message exchanges and avoids data propagation delays.

Main Methods:

• Developed DUPP with simple platooning maneuver procedures, not requiring explicit vehicle conformity.
• Utilized a service channel for DUPP operations to avoid interference with control channel safety messages.
• Implemented an analytic hierarchy process for forwarder selection to manage road event notifications and prevent broadcast storms.

Main Results:

• DUPP demonstrated suitability for dynamic urban settings, maintaining platoon stability through flexible and rapid formation without central support.
• Performance comparison with the ENSEMBLE project indicated DUPP's effectiveness in key metrics like travel time, platoon lifetime, and maneuver success ratio.
• DUPP effectively manages urban platooning challenges, including adaptability and efficient transmission handling.

Conclusions:

• The proposed DUPP is a robust solution for urban vehicle platooning, offering enhanced flexibility and stability.
• DUPP's decentralized approach successfully addresses the complexities of urban environments, outperforming existing methods in critical aspects.
• This protocol facilitates efficient and reliable platooning in dynamic urban settings, paving the way for future intelligent transportation systems.