Coordinating Truck Platooning by Clustering Pairwise Fuel-Optimal Plans
Abstract
We consider the fuel-optimal coordination of trucks into platoons. Truck platooning is a promising technology that enables trucks to save significant amounts of fuel by driving close together and thus reducing air drag. We study how fuel-optimal speed profiles for platooning can be computed. A first-order fuel model is considered and pairwise optimal plans are derived. We formulate an optimization problem that combines these pairwise plans into an overall plan for a large number of trucks. The problem resembles a medoids clustering problem. We propose an approximation algorithm similar to the partitioning around medoids algorithm and discuss its convergence. The method is evaluated with Monte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can compute a plan for thousands of trucks and that significant fuel savings can be achieved.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.06516,
title = {Coordinating Truck Platooning by Clustering Pairwise Fuel-Optimal Plans},
author = {Sebastian van de Hoef and Karl H. Johansson and Dimos V. Dimarogonas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.06516},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
To appear in the proceedings of Intelligent Transporation Systems (ITSC), 2015 IEEE 18th International Conference on, 15-18 September 2015