Merging And Splitting Maneuver Of Platoons By Means Of A Novel Pid Controller

With the advent of self-driving cars in road networks, automobile engineers have now focused on platooning of Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDVs) to look into the freight transport domain. A platoon is a number of vehicles travelling in tandem and electronically connected to each other. In a platoon, the first vehicle has a certified driver and the other vehicles follow autonomously. While platooning reduces the number of drivers generally required for standalone vehicles, it also improves fuel efficiency reducing the air-drag between the trails of vehicles. Although a number of researchers in the world have concentrated on platooning from the application point of view, this paper proposes a control algorithm which looks into the basic platooning maneuvers, such as platoon merging and platoon splitting. The merging and splitting of platoons in this work has been realized using the most commonly used controller used in the process industry, i.e. the PID controller which has been simulated using the micro-simulator VISSIM. The results presented in the end of the paper shows the efficacy of the PID controller used for platoon movements as well as for platoon maneuvers as well.