A testing platform for cooperative vehicle platoon controllers

This paper presents a hardware implementation of a platoon of four 1:14 scaled trucks. For this experiment, each truck was equipped with sensors for the measurement of specific variables required for the control of the platoon. These variables were transmitted via WLAN to an MPC555 processor in which the controller as well as the incoming data were processed. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) have been developed to monitor the dynamic behavior of the system under full communication as well as under disturbances and to modify the parameters of the system online. To test the platform a cascade control structure has been proposed.