Control of autonomous vehicles with vehicle-to-vehicle communication

The driving control of automated vehicles on a string is described and examined by experiments. Vehicles are fully automated and linked on a string with small gaps by vehicle-to-vehicle communication without hardware couplers. Each vehicle has functions of autonomous navigation and vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Speed control of linked vehicles is necessary to maintain small gaps and avoid collisions between vehicles. It requires data from the preceding vehicle such as speed, position and direction which are transmitted by vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The steering of the preceding vehicle is controlled so as to hit a series of target points successively which are put along a route. The transmitted data of the position of the preceding vehicle is regarded as a target point of the trajectory of its following one. The speed and steering control of two vehicles on a string are examined. The experimental results show that the driving control system proposed in this paper is suited to the vehicle following system.