The public defense of Shahriar Hasan’s licentiate thesis in Computer Science and Engineering will take place at Mälardalen University, room Lambda and Online/Zoom, at 13.15 on October 23, 2020.
Title: “Fail-Operational and Fail-Safe Vehicle Platooning in the Presence of Transient Communication Errors”.
Serial number: 294.
The faculty examiner is Mikael Asplund, Linköpings universitet, and the examining committee consists of Dr. Arrate Alonso Gomez, Mondragon Unibertsitatea; Professor Paul Davidsson, Malmö universitet; and Mikael Asplund, Linköpings universitet.
Reserve; Professor Hans Hansson, Mälardalen University.
Abstract:
Recent advances in connected automated driving systems show great potential towards a safer, cleaner, and sustainable, intelligent transportation ecosystem. A group of wirelessly connected vehicles can follow a lead vehicle closely and autonomously to form a vehicle train that is called a platoon. The following vehicles in the platoon promise to save up to 20% in fuel-consumption by reducing aerodynamic drag. Moreover, 90% of the road fatalities are caused by human shortcomings that can be lessened significantly by automating the driving tasks and offering driver offload. Despite the enormous societal, environmental, and economic possibilities, the practical realization of platooning technology on public highways is constrained by safety concerns. This is because platooning is a safety-critical system of systems, and the consequences of failures can endanger human life, cause property, or environmental damage.
To this end, this thesis focuses on incorporating fail-operational and fail-safe mechanisms in platooning to ensure safety within and among the platooning vehicles and that of the other road users by leveraging wireless vehicular communications. When a communication error or disturbance is detected, the fail-operational mechanism temporarily increases the safety distance between the vehicles and/or changes the way the vehicles communicate. In the event of system failure due to hardware or software malfunctions, or a sudden appearance of a road hazard, the fail-safe mechanism is activated and offers several different emergency braking techniques to stop the platoon while avoiding collisions between the vehicles. For instance, the last vehicle can be instructed to brake first, or the whole platoon can first coordinate and then brake at the same time using full-force.
The result is that platooning can take place in a safe way despite problems with communications, and also that the platoon can be stopped in a safe way in case of more severe problems such as road hazards.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 764951.