Analysis of an Ad-hoc Platoon Formation and Dissolution Strategy on a Multi-lane Highway. GeoComputation 2019

Vehicle platooning has become popular in the recent Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) research. The literature typically assumes a planned formation and dissolution of platoons, mostly at source and destination. In contrast, this research considers platoons that can be formed on the fly. We investigate a greedy type of platoon formation with no particular order of destinations of the platoon members. This greedy formation allows a quick formation of the platoon but imposes an overhead of platoon rebuild cost when platoon members leave. The question arises whether this greedy formation and dissolution of platoons can preserve the original fuel benefit of platooning. To investigate this question, this research implements such a strategy and provides a generic guideline for fuel-efficient ad-hoc platooning.