Vehicle-to-Vehicle Optical Camera Communications for Platoon Verification

In autonomous platooning, multiple vehicles on the road are using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications to follow each other. They are able to accelerate and decelerate simultaneously at a reduced safety distance. Before building or joining a platoon, it is crucial to verify the identity of the communication partner. A V2V optical camera communications (OCC) system can be used as an out-of-band channel to transmit a verification key. When establishing a communication link on a fast and low-latency radio frequency (RF) channel, this key can be used to verify the identity of the communication partner. This paper demonstrates that such a V2V-OCC channel can be realized using modern vehicles without any additional hardware components. Light-emitting diode (LED) taillights can be modulated to transmit a signal. Cameras that are already installed for advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) can be used to receive the OCC signal, e.g., the front-facing camera of a Tesla Model 3. The platoon verification process between two vehicles following each other on a highway takes less than 6 seconds, even under challenging conditions, e.g., low sun or rain.