Baudouin Dafflon

Vehicle platoon control with multi-configuration ability

Vehicle platoon approaches found in literature deal generally with column formations adapted to urban or highway transportation systems. This paper presents an approach in which each platoon vehicle follows a virtual vehicle, in order to cope with issues such as di erent platoon geometries. Those di erent types of formations can be encountered in a wide range of field such as the military or agriculture. A platoon formation is composed of a vehicle which assumes the platoon leader role (generally human driven) and other vehicles which play the follower role. A follower vehicle assigns a local leader role to one of the vehicles it perceives. The approach presented here bases on a predefined translation of position, by a follower vehicle, calculated from the perceived position of its local leader vehicle. This translation depends on the desired platoon geometry, expressed in terms of a predefined longitudinal and lateral distance of a follower vehicle relatively to its local leader position. Each vehicle is implemented as an agent which makes decisions depending only on its own perception.

Intelligent crossroads for vehicle platoons reconfiguration

Nowadays, urban environments suffer from recurrent traffic jam with associated side effects. One reason of this is the social implicit priority given to personal cars, which are preferred to public transportation systems the main drawback of which is the time and path rigidity. Recently, some alternative transportation systems have been developed based on size adaptable trains of vehicles called platoon. These approaches still suffer from rigid path planning. The paper presents one possible solution to overcome this drawback. The proposal is based on the use of existing crossroads as hubs able to reconfigure vehicles train while crossing. Thanks to this solution, each train component could have its specific path in the public transportation grid. This paper presents also a comparative study of exposed algorithms relatively to a classical traffic light schedule.

Toward a Reactive Agent Based Parking Assistance System

Nowadays, automotive equipments tend to offer more and more driving assistance. Among these, car park assist systems are now widespread on both commercial and research levels. This paper proposes a car park assistance based on the use of the multi-agent paradigm. This approach based on the transformation of vehicle perception into a virtual environment for agents and on the evaluation of agency properties. This evaluation is then turned into a decision for vehicle guidance. The proposal is evaluated in simulation by comparing it with industrial solutions.

A self-adaptive agent-based path following control lateral regulation and obstacles avoidance

Since a couple of years, transportation systems have been entering into mutation. The part of the autonomous abilities of vehicles increases significantly with their associate constraints and problematic. Among these abilities, trajectory following is one of the minimum competence required for vehicles or mobile robots autonomy. Generally, the computation of the path to follow is made “off-line” and then is transmitted to the vehicle. The main problem then encountered is the fact that the model of the evolution area of the vehicle may have changed between the computation of the plan and its execution. If unpredictible events occur during the vehicle moves, one must recompute a local plan taking into account these new events and respecting as far as it is possible the initial plan. Since the computation of the plan for a trajectory is costly and since the computation power of a vehicle is limited, it is hardly possible to embed this kind of ability directly into vehicles. This paper proposes a reactive multi-agent based solution to address this problem with low computation power requirement and adaptive abilities allowing obstacle avoidance.

An Agent Based Layered Decision Process for Vehicle Platoon Control

Vehicle platoon systems can be considered as good alternative solutions to traffic problems encountered in urban environment. Indeed, they allow to propose new public transportation models based on size adaptable trains. In other fields, such as military operation theaters and agricultural fields, platoon systems can also solve specific problems. The goal of this paper is to propose an agent based decision process that allow to handle the control of vehicles platoon. The decision process is composed of 5 interconnected layers each dealing with one specific aspect of the decision process including the perception interpretation, the spatial configuration choice and the control of the vehicles. This model has been tested in simulation by taking into account several geometrical configurations.

A cyber-physical model for platoon system

Cyber-Physical system (CPS) are now widely used in the design of smart objects. A CPS is the integration of computational elements with physical processes. One of the most widespread application of CPS is the autonomous transportation systems. This paper presents a CPS model for the design of a platoon system approach (i.e. a set of autonomous vehicles that move together without any mechanical link while maintaining a predefined configuration). The proposed approach to platoon issue can be considered to be decentralized since each vehicle perceives its environment and acts based only on its own perceptions. The proposed approach deals with different platoon formation. The vehicles of the platoon are able to maintain their position in the configuration while avoiding collision with obstacles. The paper shows some simulation and experimentation results that allow to evaluate the quality of the proposed platoon approach.

VIPS: A simulator for platoon system evaluation

Development of intelligent behaviors for vehicles has to cope with rigorous specifications. Many tests are performed for verification, validation and a detailed study of resulting behaviors. In this workflow, testing algorithms with real vehicles is a cornerstone step in developing new intelligent features for future transportation systems. This step requires a lot of experiments before efficiently set up embedded autonomous systems. However, the development of such tests is not linear and it highly depends on external variable factors (weather, hardware or software issues, etc.). To overcome these issues, it is possible to carry out a first series of validation under a simulation framework. In this paper, we describe a simulation platform called VIPS (Vehicles In Platoon Simulator), which provides a virtual environment designed to test and validate platoon control approaches, as close as possible to reality, before bringing them in the real vehicle system. Among the features provided by the simulator, one main contribution is the direct matching between perception and control of both real and virtual vehicles. Moreover, VIPS is also able to deal with perturbations, which are dynamically added to running scenarios so as to reproduce real world conditions. Simulation results in the context of platoon control systems show the benefits of the proposed simulation framework.

WAVE: Wave Agents in a Virtual Environment - A Proof of Concept Applied to Longitudinal Distance Regulation in Platoon Control

Since a decade multi-agents became a widespread solution to tackle different kinds of issues in various application fields. Among the two main trends in multi-agent approaches (cognitive vs. reactive), the reactive one is particularly interesting for applications that require both fast response time, adaptability and robustness. Reactive Multi-agent Systems rely on simple interaction schemes between entities that can be inspired whether by Biology or Physics. The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of using interference fringes and waves properties from a multi-agent standpoint so as to tackle a real problem, longitudinal platoon regulation, already explored by different strategies including particle agents approaches or standard PID controller.

Platoon Control Algorithm Evaluation: Metrics, Configurations, Perturbations, and Scenarios

Vehicles are being equipped with more and more smart devices, which help the driver in his tasks. Alongside the trend to more and more autonomous vehicles emerges the possibility of making vehicles that move together as a platoon, which can be defined as a spatio-temporal organization of a set of vehicles based on a specific predetermined geometrical configuration. Basically, there are two main approaches for performing platoon control and these depend on the reference frame used (local or global). Even if the literature about platoon control is abundant, the most commonly used metrics are only tied to the stability of the platoon, that is, to the lateral and longitudinal distances between vehicles. However, these metrics are sufficient enough for a first evaluation of one algorithm; a deeper evaluation of a platoon control solution requires more well-defined metrics and perturbations that allow for the testing of algorithms with various parametrized conditions. The goal of this article is to present definitions of metrics, perturbations, spatial configurations, and scenarios that are aimed at helping scientists in the field to determine strong and precise evaluations of their platoon control algorithms. The work presented in this article stems directly from thinking performed during the institutional projects in which the authors have been involved and also takes inspiration from numerous articles on the subject and experiments made both in simulation and with real vehicles.

A Reactive Agent-Based Decision-Making System for SBCE

Nowadays, manufactured products offer more and more personalization. This paradigm is in acceleration due to the emergence of mass customization proposed by industry 4.0. To cope with this demand, industry must design suitable products and adhere to a strict specification. Tools and process were proposed to manage product design, validation and manufacturing such as Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE). Project Manager in charge of this critical step is helped by metrics and indicators. However, visual aid, dynamic and adatative solution, capable to reply in real-time to a major project evolution does not exist. The aim of this paper is to present an approach for SBCE alternatives selection, based on the application of reactive multiagents systems. Multi-agents systems are an efficient approach for problem solving and decision making in dynamic context. The proposal is evaluated in simulation on drone design optimization.