Minimum Platoon Set to Implement Vehicle Platoons in the Internet of Vehicles Environment

Vehicle platoons offer significant benefits in connected vehicle environments, including reduced travel time, increased throughput, mitigated congestion, and lower energy consumption. To adapt to dynamic traffic conditions, platoon formations must be adjusted flexibly; this process is facilitated by traffic management centers via real-time control and cloud-based data transmission. Given communication constraints, we propose a minimum information set that is sufficient to maintain and adjust platoon formations and that supports data storage, computation, and representation of state changes within platoons. This set comprises two components: the Property Set and the Instruction Set. The Property Set collects vehicle-level and platoon-level attributes, whereas the Instruction Set, which includes communication and control subsets, enables formation maintenance and adjustment. We design a series of algorithms structured along timeline-based and task-based frameworks to specify transition rules and task execution modes across states, thereby describing the complete life cycle of a platoon from independent driving through formation and reorganization to dissolution. Finally, we develop an integrated scenario algorithm and apply it to two representative cases: highway platooning and intersection merging and separation. The results indicate that the proposed Minimum Platoon Set has substantial potential for platoon management, providing a solid theoretical foundation and practical guidance for optimizing platoon control.