Cooperative formations on highway

• Ondrej Borovec
• Supervisor: Ing. Martin Schaefer
• Study Programme: Open Informatics, Bachelor
• Field of Study: Computer and Information Science

Abstract

This thesis deals with advantages and the effect of platooning concept on highway traffic both in general sense and for the structure of traffic in the Czech Republic. Three different approaches to the cooperation of the vehicles in the platoon during changing of lanes were studied and described and they were compared in terms of safety of traffic, reached maximum capacity of highway and average speed of passenger vehicles. In order to realize the simulations, the traffic simulator Alite has been improved and a module that supports "platooning" concept has been developed. The simulated environment is based on a simple basic statistical analysis of highway data and the results of simulation were validated by comparison with theoretical assumptions and results.

We created two traffic models, that simulate traffic density of highway with real ration of passenger vehicles and trucks in rush hours. Their simulation results verified the assumption that "platooning" increases highway capacity and helps to increase the average speed. Other experiments proved, that cooperative platoons have small negative effect on these features, but platoons increase safety of changing of lane. Based on these results, we recommend applying platooning concept on with higher cooperation level.