EFFECTS OF SYSTEMIC ELEMENTS IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES PLATOONING

Platooning, the early stage of autonomous driving, has already proved the possibility through actual driving experiments. However, to successfully use the platoon in real world, various algorithms related to the formation, maintenance, and release of platooning need to be investigated. In this study, the various systemic elements are examined with the situation of forming a platoon. To investigate the behavior of vehicles with various systemic elements when they form a platoon, a mathematical model-based optimization technique is applied with four different objective functions. The numerical example and sensitivity tests are performed to verify the effects of systemic elements for the behavior of the autonomous vehicles during the platoon forming stage. The operation trends of the autonomous vehicles can be categorized as three cases - i) stable situation, ii) complex situation and iii) impossible situation when they form a platoon. In case of stable situation, a rule-based simple method can be applied while a sophisticated control algorithm is significantly required for complex situation. This study proves the necessity of the sophisticated control algorithm for controlling of each autonomous vehicle separately and carefully by each time unit to achieve the platooning velocity and space for forming a platoon. The result of this study can be applied directly to develop a sophisticated control algorithm for further research.