Safe Cooperative Merging Strategy for Platoon Forming by a Constrained Multi-Vehicle System

We propose a kinematic motion strategy which allows performing a sequential merging of a set of curvature-constrained wheeled vehicles in order to obtain a platoon formation - one of the basic motion tasks defined for intelligent autonomous vehicles. The proposed design methodology is motivated by the lining-up maneuvering characterizing the N-trailer structures. The main emphasis has been paid on the safety guarantees of the dynamic navigation of the fleet of vehicles. In this context, we provide formal conditions under which all the vehicles during the maneuvers keep their motion in a prescribed road width, their longitudinal velocities and motion curvatures are constrained to the prescribed bounded ranges, and the minimal safe inter-vehicle distances are not violated. Formal considerations have been complemented by exemplary results of numerical simulations for a set of five vehicles.