Cooperative Merging for Multiple Connected and Automated Vehicles at Highway On-Ramps via Virtual Platoon Formation

The on-ramps traffic for merging of main road and secondary road will lead to congestion under heavy traffic conditions. Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are recognized as one of the techniques which could improve traffic capacity, safety and fuel efficiency. This paper proposes a cooperative merging strategy which projects the approaching vehicles on the secondary road onto the main road to form a virtual vehicle platoon Bi-directional communication topology is used to achieve the vehicle inter-communications. In addition, the distributed controller based on feedback linearization method is designed to ensure the inner-vehicle closed-loop stability for virtual platoon with derived feedback gains. The merging simulations at highway on-ramps show stable platoon and smooth merging for multiple CAVs before the merging point.