Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 571: Mathematical Analysis of Environmental Effects of Forming a Platoon of Smart Vehicles (Sustainability)

The platooning of autonomous smart vehicles in a high-speed driving environment is a technology that can be achieved in the near future, and some similar driving-assistive technologies have already been put in practice. There are a variety of advantages to platooning, and one of them is the environmental aspect. This study endeavored to perform a mathematical analysis of the environmental aspect of forming a platoon of smart vehicles. For that, a mathematical experiment was designed with four kinds of scenarios, and each scenario had a different operation profile in terms of the velocity and acceleration of each smart vehicle. The power consumption and both forming distance and time were derived variously according to each scenario through mathematical experiments, and it was observed that the length of the acceleration period and the average operation velocity of the smart vehicles had a significant impact on the environmental effect of platoon formation. It is hoped that this study will be a touchstone for various kinds of platooning algorithm research considering the environment.