A novel graph and safety potential field theory‐based vehicle platoon formation and optimization method

Abstract

Platooning is considered to be a very effective method for improving traffic efficiency, traffic safety and fuel economy under the connected and automated environment. The prerequisite for realizing these advantages is how to form a platoon without any collisions and how to maintain and optimize the car‐following behavior after platoon formation. However, most of the existing studies focus on the platoon configuration and information transmission method, while only a few attempt to address the issue of platoon formation and optimization methods. To this end, this study proposes a novel platoon formation and optimization model combining graph theory and safety potential field (G‐SPF) theory for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) under different vehicle distributions. Compared to previous studies, we innovatively incorporate the concept of the safety potential field to better describe the actual driving risk of vehicles and ensure their absolute safety. A four‐step platoon formation and optimization strategy is developed to achieve platoon preliminary formation and platoon driving optimization control. Three traffic scenarios with different CAVs distributions are designed to verify the effectiveness of our proposed platoon formation method based on G‐SPF theory, and the simulation results indicate that a collision‐free platoon can be formed in a short time. Additionally, the G‐SPF‐based platoon driving optimization control method is demonstrated by comparing it with two typical control strategies. Compared with the constant spacing and constant time headway control strategies, the simulation results show that our proposed method can improve the traffic capacity by approximately 48.8% and 26.6%, respectively.