Platoon Coordination and Leader Selection in Mixed Transportation Systems via Dynamic Programming

TL;DR

This paper presents a dynamic programming method to optimize platoon coordination and leader selection in mixed electric and fuel trucks, improving revenue and efficiency in freight transportation.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable dynamic programming approach for hub-based platoon coordination in heterogeneous truck fleets, addressing electric truck charging and leader assignment.

Findings

Method achieves polynomial-time computation.

Simulation shows improved fleet revenue.

Scalable for large truck fleets.

Abstract

With the growing penetration of electric trucks, freight transportation is transitioning toward a mixed system comprising both fuel-powered and electric trucks. Enhancing truck platoon formation in such a heterogeneous environment presents new challenges. This paper investigates the hub-based platoon coordination problem in a mixed truck fleet, where the focus is to optimize the trucks' waiting times, charging amounts for electric trucks, and platoon leader assignments. The objective is to maximize the overall platoon revenue of the fleet while accounting for the associated waiting and charging costs. We formulate the problem as a mixed-integer linear program and present a dynamic programming approach to compute its sub-optimal solution efficiently. The proposed method operates in polynomial time, ensuring scalable computational efficiency. Simulation studies involving 1,000 trucks traveling between two hubs in Sweden demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed approach.