A Platoon-Based Hierarchical Cooperative Vehicle Merging Strategy: Considering High-Level Traffic Management

Uncoordinated merging of different directions vehicles at the ramp is one of the main reasons resulting in the traffic oscillations phenomenon, which directly influences travel time and fuel consumption of vehicles. Emerging connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication technologies provide the possibility for detailed vehicle motion control to reduce negative influences of traffic oscillations imposed by uncoordinated merging at the ramp. This paper presents a novel platoon-based vehicle cooperative driving strategy at a single-lane ramp to achieve smooth traffic flows near the capacity of a connected and automated highway system environment. At the same time, we set an MPC-based ramp signal at the ramp entrance to dynamically adjust the traffic volume entering the ramp according to the traffic congestion status downstream of the ramp. The simulation results show that the proposed strategy can reduce cumulative fuel consumption and travel time.