A Novel ROS-Based Joining and Leaving Protocols for Platoon Management

摘要

Over the past few years, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has become a topic of considerable interest for development of safer and more efficient way of transportation. One of the most important applications in the ITS field is vehicle platooning, which is considered to provide a promising solution for several critical issues of road transportation nowadays. Vehicle platooning has three essential maneuvers in its formation, which are merging, following and splitting. Thus, this work is designated to study the basic maneuvers of the platoon and propose detailed protocols for these maneuvers. These protocols are tested on two different platoon of vehicles; homogeneous and heterogeneous. The platoon configuration, maneuvering protocols and the control architecture needed; used for longitudinal and lateral motion of vehicles are introduced. A visualization tool based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) is used to test the performance and safety of the most challenging maneuvers of a platoon which are middle joining and leaving of a vehicle from the convoy in order to harvest the advantages obtained using a platoon in highways. Results show that a stable platoon with the desired tracking performance and gap control is formed by all the stated maneuvers discussed throughout the study.