The Design of Platoon Maneuvers for IVHS

The use of control and communication technologies in vehicles and in the highway in the form of an Intelligent Vehicle/Highway System or IVHS is an approach that promises to increase capacity without building new roads. Our context is an IVHS system in which traffic is organized in platoons of very closely spaced cars under automatic control. We consider the design of three maneuvers that platoons must undertake: merging (of two platoons into one), splitting (of one platoon into two), and changing lanes. Because of space limitations, only merge is discussed in detail.