Ad-hoc platoon formation and dissolution strategies for multi-lane highways

• Published in: Journal of intelligent transportation systems Vol. 27; no. 2; pp. 161 - 173
• Main Authors: Maiti, Santa, Winter, Stephan, Kulik, Lars, Sarkar, Sudeshna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Taylor & Francis 04.03.2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Ad-hoc formation; Dissolution; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Fuel consumption; Fuel economy; fuel efficiency; Heavy vehicles; platoon dissolution strategy; platoon formation strategy; Platooning; Prediction models; Rebuilding; vehicle platooning; Vehicles
• ISSN: 1547-2450; 1547-2442
• DOI: 10.1080/15472450.2021.1993212

Vehicle platooning, a coordinated and controlled vehicle-following strategy, addresses the issue of high fuel consumption of heavy-duty vehicles. This research considers platoons that are formed on the fly in an ad-hoc manner. We investigate two types of ad-hoc platoon formation and corresponding platoon dissolution strategies. The first approach forms a platoon greedily without considering the order of destinations of the platoon members. This approach enables a quick formation but imposes an overhead of platoon rebuilding, and consequently, additional fuel cost when platoon members leave. An alternative approach forms a platoon in the order of the destinations of its platoon members. This ordered approach incurs a comparatively higher formation time due to vehicles' reorganization but does not lead to further overhead of platoon rebuilding. We investigate whether these ad-hoc formation and dissolution strategies can preserve the original fuel benefit of platooning, and which of the two ad-hoc formation strategies are more fuel-efficient. The experimental results show that the greedy formation of the platoon is more fuel-efficient for a multi-lane highway. The proposed prediction model provides 90.4% prediction accuracy for the greedy approach and 82.2% prediction accuracy for the ordered approach on average, for platoon sizes from two to six vehicles.