Eco Platoon Formation for Autonomous Electric Vehicles

In this thesis we focused our attention on autonomous electric vehicles, developing a methodology in order to decide whether a vehicle should travel alone or form a platoon. To describe the vehicle, a non linear discontinuous longitudinal model dynamics has been adopted. The algorithm created to select an optimal travel mode consists of four steps: rst, the vehicle receives data coming from the vehicles surrounding him. Second, the controller calculates the battery consumption and the travel time of forming a platoon with each of them. Third, it calculates the same parameters in the case it continues traveling alone and, as a last step, based on the driver's preferences, it decides the optimal travel conditions. In order for this methodology to be exhaustive, the two particular situations that may occur (when a platoon travels too fast or when an overtaking must be considered) have been included in the algorithm. The name Eco indicates the fact that all optimizations are done in order to minimize the vehicle's overall energy consumption. Using this process, it has been found that energy savings can be up to 20%.