This paper describes the technologies of the platoon formation control with inter-vehicle communications for the cooperative driving during the Demo 2000. The cooperative driving here means that the autonomous vehicles take such formations as flexible platooning including lane changing, merging, and leaving the platoon for compatibility of safety and efficiency of road traffic. The platoon formation control by the aid of the inter-vehicle communications consists of longitudinal control to keep the safe headway and safe lateral distance. The lateral control of each vehicle is based on the target point following algorithm with the map and the preceding vehicle position. The platoon formation control of the cooperative driving presented here is featured by that vehicles are arranged tightly but flexibly on a couple of lanes to increase the road capacity and to ease the vehicle maneuver on lane changing and merging. Demo 2000 on a test track with 5 automated vehicles that were equipped with the inter-vehicle communications and platoon formation control was conducted to show the feasibility of the technologies. A demonstration of the cooperative driving was held at the end of November 2000, the scenario of which was include stop & go, platooning, merging and obstacle avoidance.
Abstract