Abstract
Energy saving technology by using intelligent transportation systems (ITS) has been developed in energy-saving ITS project. Automatic platooning is studied to save energy cost by reducing the air resistance. To put into the practical use, it is very important to keep driver's safety during the platoon-driving. Brake system of platoon-driving truck is required of high reliability to driver's safety. Therefore, an improvement of a brake system safety for platoon-driving was developed in this research. At first, a virtual experimental platform was realized by integrating truck simulation software and platooning cruise control algorithm into a universal driving system. By using the experimental platform, on the assumption of emergent stop of preceding truck during automatic platooning, driver behaviors for emergent avoidance in following truck are studied. Especially, braking operations are analyzed in different maximum braking decelerations of the following trucks. By using results of the driving simulator, the brake system was improved. As countermeasures against brake safety, two approaches were proposed in this paper. One countermeasure was to put a secondary brake system which behaved in a fail situation of the main brake system. Another one was to adjust maximum deceleration in each experimental truck. The safety of the brake system was improved by setting up of these functions to the trucks.
