Abstract
This paper proposes the control for platooning and the control for changing formations of a platoon. The platooning of vehicles has been developed in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems aiming at enlarging traffic capacity or laborsaving. If the platooning of electric light vehicles with very short inter-vehicle distance is realized, it is expected to stretch the limitation of electric light vehicles, because small capacity of the electric light vehicles is timely enlarged, resulting in giving a potential to apply them to more various purposes. This study is aiming at enhancing the maneuver at platooning of electric light vehicles and has developed the control method for changing formations from a single-line formation to a double-line formation and from a double-line formation to a single-line formation. This paper describes the proposed method of control for changing formations and reports the experimental results using four electric light vehicles.
