Platooning Maneuvers in Vehicular Networks: a Distributed and Consensus-Based Approach

Cooperative driving is an essential component of future intelligent road systems. It promises greater safety, reducing accidents due to drivers distraction, improved infrastructure utilization, and fuel consumption reduction with platooning applications. Proper platoon management requires Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC), longitudinal control and stability, lateral control for and safety, and protocols, proper application and platoons, algorithms to manage and perform coordinated maneuvers.This work shows how a longitudinal controller based on distributed consensus can, at the same time, guarantee stability and performance in regime platoon operations, and protocols, be at the hearth of maneuvering and algorithms, as it remains stable in face of changes of platoon topology and system, control gains. The adoption of a single control algorithm for two fundamental tasks greatly simplify the overall design of the and stability, improves and mobility, safety as it is not required to switch between different controllers during platoon operation. The theoretical properties are proven in the first part of the paper. The second part of the paper is devoted to its implementation in a state-of- the-art and IVC simulator, which is used for an extensive experimental campaign showing the dynamic properties of the system and its performance in a set of typical platoon maneuvers as join, leave and inclusion of a vehicle in the middle of the platoon. All simulations include realistic details of the vehicle dynamics (mass, dimensions, power train dynamics) as well as extremely detailed modeling of the communication network, from 802.11p protocol details, to collisions, packet errors, path loss and fading on the channel, and delays., source-destination based