A Functionally Safe Dual-bus Platoon Architecture for Future Smart Cities

Platooning public transport buses on the highways of future Indian smart cities is a method to improve the safety and transportation efficiency. However, research on platooning has experienced an explosive growth but the main obstacle to their practical realization is a convincing safety concept. Along with this barrier, countries like India have more roadblocks for platooning such as poor road, transport infrastructure and adequate law. The most critical issue of allowing automated vehicles (AVs) in public traffic is appointment of liability. In this paper, we have proposed a concept to drive a highly automated bus on highways in public traffic. Very small inter-vehicle distance in proposed system increases the highway capacity and less air-drag improve fuel efficiency. The proposed solution includes main system setup, functional architecture of system and a proposed safety lifecycle for highly automated vehicles.