A Scaled Three-Vehicle Platooning Platform

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scaled three-vehicle platooning platform designed for autonomous research, enabling safe, cost-effective, and realistic experiments on cooperative control and stability in vehicle platooning.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel scaled multi-vehicle platform for autonomous platooning research, emphasizing cooperative control and human-in-the-loop autonomy for experimental validation.

Findings

Platform allows controlled, repeatable experiments on leader-follower coordination.

Offers a safer, lower-cost alternative to full-scale testing with enhanced physical realism.

Facilitates rapid prototyping and validation of platooning controllers.

Abstract

Vehicle platooning has attracted increasing attention as a promising approach to improve traffic efficiency, energy consumption, and roadway safety through coordinated multi-vehicle operation. A key challenge in platooning lies in maintaining stable and accurate path tracking during dynamic maneuvers such as lane changes, where lateral deviations and heading disturbances generated by the lead vehicle may propagate downstream to following vehicles. Robust longitudinal and lateral control systems are therefore essential not only for individual vehicle tracking performance, but also for overall platoon stability. For experimental studies, the Intelligent Mobility and Robotics Lab (IMRL) develops a scaled multi-vehicle platform for autonomous platooning research, with a particular emphasis on cooperative control and human-in-the-loop autonomy. This platform consists of one human-operable lead vehicle and two autonomous followers, enabling controlled and repeatable experiments on leader-follower coordination. Compared with full-scale field testing, this scaled platform offers a safer, lower-cost, and more flexible environment for rapid prototyping, controller validation, and multi-agent autonomy studies, while providing stronger physical realism than purely simulation-based evaluations.