A Platoon Formation Strategy for Heterogeneous Vehicle Types at a Signalized Intersection

Many studies and real-world experiments have demonstrated the potential ability of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) platooning to improve fuel efficiency and network performance. However, most studies ignore the impacts of vehicle types and their different acceleration rates in the platoon formation at the signalized intersection. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a platoon formation strategy with heterogeneous acceleration rates of CAVs. The key idea is that the heavy truck starts earlier than the green starts but from a faraway stop line (that is customized by the intersection controller). An analytical model is developed to calculate the early starting time and prior starting point based on the vehicle's acceleration rate and position of vehicles in an approaching queue. Microscopic simulation results show that the proposed platoon formation strategy is able to reduce the start-up delay of the platoon, by as much as 50% compared to a traditional platoon. Sensitivity analysis suggests that density, market penetration rates have a significant impact on the performance of platoon formation.