Vehicle Platooning for Merge Coordination in a Connected Driving Environment: A Hybrid ACC-DMPC Approach

This study proposes a vehicle platooning algorithm to minimize the disruption from a lane-changing maneuver. Towards achieving this objective, while most studies emphasize the interaction between the lane-changing vehicle and vehicles directly or indirectly impacted by the lane-changing maneuver (i.e., the followers of the lane-changing vehicle in the target lane after the lane-changing maneuver), this study will focus on the leaders of the lane-changing vehicle in the target lane. Assuming the connectivity between vehicles, we propose a novel approach to implement both Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Model Predictive Control (MPC) for platoon control. The proposed hybrid algorithm will create a forward-moving shockwave, resulting in an additional gap for the lane-changing vehicle. Simulation results indicate the ability of the proposed approach to generate an additional gap for the lane-changing vehicle and consequently, minimizing and potentially eliminating the disruption from the lane-changing maneuver.