An autonomous platoon formation strategy to optimize CAV car-following stability under periodic disturbance.

In the real word, the periodic disturbance in traffic flow caused by disrupting maneuvers has a huge impact on the car-following stability. As analyzed in this paper, the asymptotic stability of a car-following model, quantified by the coefficient of dynamic responses, is relatively low at low disturbing frequencies, and gradually increases as the disturbing frequency increases. Fortunately, the development of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology and the existing researching works on CAV platoon control have shown great prospect of CAV platooning in the improvement of car-following stability. In order to develop a method to manage the CAV platooning with the explicit purpose of optimizing the car-following stability under periodic disturbance, this study presents an autonomous platoon formation strategy (APFS) for CAV platoon. At certain disturbing frequency, APFS can automatically split a large CAV car-following group into a leading CAV and a number of small CAV platoons, and all CAVs in each platoon follow either the last CAV in the previous platoon or the leading CAV, abiding by the newly designed platoon-based IDM (P-IDM) car-following strategy, so that the overall car-following stability of the CAV group can be optimized. Results of numerical simulations demonstrate that, compared with several existing platoon control strategies, the proposed APFS is capable of significantly enhancing the stability of CAV car-following group, as well as passenger comfort and fuel economy of CAVs, under various types of periodic disturbance. In general, APFS works most effectively when the disturbing frequency is around 0.4 ∼ 0.6 rad/s. Therefore, the proposed APFS shows good potentials in mitigating the oscillation in traffic flow due to periodic perturbations and improving the asymptotic stability of CAV car-following groups. • The asymptotic stability of car-following model under periodic disturbance is analyzed. • A coefficient of dynamic response is defined to quantify the car-following stability under periodic disturbance. • A platoon-based IDM (P-IDM) strategy is designed to elevate the car-following stability of CAV platoon. • An autonomous platoon formation strategy (APFS) is proposed to optimize the car-following stability of CAV platoon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]