Platooning

Automated vehicle convoys

Platooning can be seen as a first step towards autonomous driving: the inter vehicle distances are reduced to benefit from the aerodynamic drag reduction. This allows to reduce the energy consumption by 10-15%. To do so, environmental perception and data exchange are crucial. Using modern sensor technologies and reliable, low latency communication allows to reduce inter vehicle distances significantly, compared to human driving. Besides the increased efficiency, platooning comes along with other key benefits:

• increased safety: automating the longitudinal control of vehicles reduces the reaction time. The occurance of head-on and rear-impact collisions can be reduced.
• increased traffic throughput: due to smaller inter vehicle distances, the throughput can be increased. Ghost traffic jams are avoided as aggressive acceleration/deceleration profiles can be avoided.
• increased comfort: although the driver is not substituted, once platooned, drivers can tackle different tasks or simply relax to be prepared for driving manually once the platoon ends.