Publication

As the number of cars in the roads increase new strategies to alleviate traffic congestion problems are necessary. Cooperative driving is deemed an efficient and sustainable solution to help mitigating some of the problems generated by roads capacity saturation. This project focuses on a specific type of cooperative driving, namely platooning, with short distance between vehicles where the longitudinal speed is automatically controlled and the human driver controls the lateral displacements. With such an approach, road throughput can be increased while maintaining safety and decreasing the fuel consumption. Successfully solving the problem of platooning requires the interaction of several different systems, co-existing in a complex, safe-critical architecture. In this paper we summarize the architecture designed and implemented for the Chalmers vehicle participating to the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) and highlight the most important details and achievements. Simulations and experimental results are presented showing that our vehicle, a Volvo S60 equipped with the proposed architecture, is able to interact with other platoon members and is able to follow a platoon leader according to a defined set of rules.