Autonomously driven railway cabin convoys — Communication, control design and experimentation

The subject of the RailCab project is the development of autonomous railway cabins, which can dynamically group to convoys without mechanical coupling. This enables an on-demand use of these vehicles while retaining the cost and ecological advantages of public transport. In this paper, we present (1) the system concept with focus on the convoy operation mode. Furthermore we explain (2) the system and communication architecture, which is the basis for the coordination and organization of locally distributed systems. The main contribution of this paper is the convoy control system (3). The proposed methods allow automatic and dynamic operation of vehicle convoys. Experimental results from real-life tests (4) validate the system, the communication structure and the control synthesis, thereby ensuring safe and reliable operation.