Implementation and Testing of Dynamic and Flexible Platoons in Urban Areas

Kurzfassung

A new way of platooning in urban areas has been presented on the AAET conference last year. The theoretical approach of linking Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (C-ACC) to state-machine based platoon coordination has been discussed, which has been developed within the European H2020 project MAVEN (Managing Automated Vehicles Enhances Network). This approach leads to a maximum of flexibility and a dynamic platoon behavior allowing to cope with the complex situations occurring under urban conditions. Special attention of this development laid on the inclusion of communication - inside the platoon and to possible new members (V2V) and between infrastructure and the platoon (V2I and I2V) to allow coordinated movements through signalized intersections. During the last year, the theoretical approach has been put into praxis. Several steps had to be taken to reach the goal of driving on public roads in the end. First, simulations had to be performed. Then, an approach based on augmented reality has been chosen to test different scenarios on test tracks without the need of equipping several vehicles with the required hardware for C-ACC-platooning. Afterwards, more real components (traffic lights, other platooning vehicles) were added, until finally test runs could be performed on the public roads of the Tostmannplatz in Braunschweig, which is part of the Application platform for Intelligent Mobility (AIM). This paper shows the different test setups and approaches and describes early results of the tests.