Controlled Intra-Platoon Collisions for Emergency Braking in Close-Distance Driving Arrangements

The increasing degree of automation and communication makes it possible that vehicles travel at short separations of a few meters, i.e., in a close-distance driving arrangement or platoon. This leads to higher energy/fuel savings and an increased vehicle throughput on roads, among other benefits. Whereas a considerable amount of effort has been dedicated to cruise control in such settings, techniques for emergency braking have been paid less attention. However, this is of paramount importance for a safe operation in such settings and requires special attention. The goal is to reduce the overall stopping distance when braking in an emergency, while keeping a compact platoon, i.e., inter-vehicle separations as short as possible to maximize benefits. This turns out to be challenging, in particular, if vehicles have different braking capabilities, e.g., due to their type and/or loading conditions. In some cases, intra-platoon collisions may even be the only way to avoid major accidents. In this paper, we are concerned with this problem and propose an approach based on engineering controlled intra-platoon collisions. The idea is to minimize potential damage incurred by platoon vehicles, while reducing the overall stopping distance. We illustrate and evaluate our proposed approach for the case of a two-vehicle arrangement based on detailed simulations.