Evaluation of lateral trajectories with different controllers for multi-vehicle merging in platoon

This paper studies the problem of vehicle platooning with a particular focus on evaluation of lateral trajectories when one or several vehicle(s) merge(s) from the adjacent lane into the main vehicle platoon under longitudinal control. The merging vehicles should be capable of executing lateral maneuver in different platoon speeds while avoiding high lateral acceleration. For this purpose two adaptive lateral trajectory generation techniques are proposed and compared. Performances of different controllers are tested under adaptive lateral manoeuvres when multiple vehicles change lane to join the platoon. The proposed approaches are then tested and verified in our newly developed simulation platform SimPlatoon.