Truck Platoon Formation at Hubs : An Optimal Release Time Rule

• We consider a hub-based platoon coordination problem in which vehicles arrive at a hub according to an independent and identically distributed stochastic arrival process. The vehicles wait at the hub, and a platoon coordinator, at each time-step, decides whether to release the vehicles from the hub in the form of a platoon or wait for more vehicles to arrive. The platoon release time problem is modeled as a stopping rule problem wherein the objective is to maximize the average platooning benefit of the vehicles located at the hub and there is a cost of having vehicles waiting at the hub. We show that the stopping rule problem is monotone and the optimal platoon release time policy will therefore be in the form of a one time-step look-ahead rule. The performance of the optimal release rule is numerically compared with (i) a periodic release time rule and (ii) a non-causal release time rule where the coordinator knows all the future realizations of the arrival process. Our numerical results show that the optimal release time rule achieves a close performance to that of the non-causal rule and outperforms the periodic rule, especially when the arrival rate is low. 

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Reglerteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Control Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Platooning

Coordination

Optimization

Stopping rule problems

Freight transportation

Real-time operations

Intelligent transportation systems

Simulation

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)