Optimal Lane Change Analysis for Vehicle Platooning Based on Lateral and Longitudinal Control

This paper mainly focuses on the problem of optimal lane change between vehicle platoonings. In order to evaluate the influence of the speed fluctuation of the vehicle platooning system in different scenarios, a fluctuation evaluation index is designed with consideration of merging comfort. Further, a corresponding optimization algorithm is proposed to search the optimal lane change speed and distance when vehicles request to merging into platoon. Above analysis is important because changing lane at the optimal speed can suppress the disturbance caused by merging into platoon and improve the stability of the vehicle platooning system, which has potential benefits for improving the merging comfort, and reducing the fuel consumption of the entire platoon system. Simulation results show that the proposed optimization algorithm is effective to find the value of lane change factors corresponding to the minimum system speed fluctuation.