A Preliminary Implementation for Vehicle Platoon Control System

This paper presents an implementation of automatic longitudinal control system for a platoon of vehicles. The goal of the control is to maintain vehicle spacings to within several feet, resulting in a substantial increase in a highway capacity. The objective of the paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of this idea by field tests with two vehicles. The authors have integrated all elements of the control system using readily available equipment. The importance of the platoon communication scheme is explained, and experimental results are used to illustrate how the system works.