Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control and Decision Making for Fuel-Efficient Vehicle Platooning

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is a new generation of driver assistance systems developed on the basis of traditional cruise control. It has played a positive role in improving driving safety, reducing the incidence of traffic accidents, and reducing fatigue in driving. At the same time, the application of this technology can help form a vehicle platoon with a certain distance among vehicles. During the driving of most vehicles, the platoon can effectively reduce the wind resistance of subsequent vehicles, thus improving fuel economy. However, in practice, whether the two vehicles need to form a platoon and whether the fuel consumption will be reduced after forming a platoon are both questions that need to be considered. In this paper, the vehicle kinematics model and control model based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) are given first, and a fuel-saving rate calculation model is established. According to the fuel saving rate, whether the vehicle is to join the vehicle platoon is determined. Finally, we develop a simulink-based simulation system and conduct simulation experiments to verify the effectiveness of our proposed method.