On-line reference trajectory generation for manually convoying a platoon of automatic urban vehicles

Various "Urban Transportation Systems" are currently in developing, in order to put forward solutions to congestion and pollution in dense areas. Autonomous electric vehicles in free-access can be seen as an attractive approach, in view of the large flexibility that can be expected. One instrumental functionality linked to this solution is platoon motion: several autonomous vehicles accurately follow the trajectory of a manually driven first vehicle, with pre-specified inter-distances. A global decentralized platoon control strategy, supported by inter-vehicle communications and relying on nonlinear control techniques is here proposed. Each vehicle is controlled with respect to the same smooth reference trajectory, inferred on-line from the motion of the first vehicle via B-spline optimization. Experimental results, carried out with four urban vehicles, demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach.