Probe-and-Release Coordination of Platoons at Highway Bottlenecks with Unknown Parameters

2025/11/08 by Yi Gao, Gao, Yi, Xi Xiong +5
Business, Management and Accounting · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Advanced Queuing Theory Analysis #FOS: Electrical engineering #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #Traffic control and management #Transportation Planning and Optimization #electronic engineering #information engineering

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.06026

openalex publication_date 2025/11/08 · openalex created_date 2025/11/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This paper considers coordination of platoons of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) at mixed-autonomy bottlenecks in the face of three practically important factors, viz. time-varying traffic demand, random CAV platoon sizes, and capacity breakdowns. Platoon coordination is essential to smoothen the interaction between CAV platoons and non-CAV traffic. Based on a fluid queuing model, we develop a "probe-and-release" algorithm that simultaneously estimates environmental parameters and coordinates CAV platoons for traffic stabilization. We show that this algorithm ensures bounded estimation errors and bounded traffic queues. The proof builds on a Lyapunov function that jointly penalizes estimation errors and traffic queues and a drift argument for an embedded Markov process. We validate the proposed algorithm in a standard micro-simulation environment and compare against a representative deep reinforcement learning method in terms of control performance and computational efficiency.

Citations

• From Road Congestion to Vehicle-Control Enabled Artificial Traffic Fluids
• Robust Optimal Lane-changing Control for Connected Autonomous Vehicles in Mixed Traffic
• Stochastic Time-Optimal Trajectory Planning for Connected and Automated Vehicles in Mixed-Traffic Merging Scenarios
• Data efficient reinforcement learning and adaptive optimal perimeter control of network traffic dynamics
• Distributed Cooperative Control and Optimization of Connected Automated Vehicles Platoon Against Cut-in Behaviors of Social Drivers
• Computing Systems for Autonomous Driving: State-of-the-Art and Challenges
• Improving Urban Traffic Throughput with Vehicle Platooning: Theory and\n Experiments
• Analysis and Design of Vehicle Platooning Operations on Mixed-Traffic Highways
• Coordinating Vehicle Platoons for Highway Bottleneck Decongestion and Throughput Improvement
• Routing for Traffic Networks with Mixed Autonomy
• Platoons of connected vehicles can double throughput in urban roads

Related

• Analysis and Design of Vehicle Platooning Operations on Mixed-Traffic Highways
• A Hybrid Queuing Model for Coordinated Vehicle Platooning on Mixed-Autonomy Highways: Training and Validation
• An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach to Vehicle Platooning Coordination in Networks
• Learning a Stable, Safe, Distributed Feedback Controller for a Heterogeneous Platoon of Autonomous Vehicles
• A Constrained Optimal Control Framework for Vehicle Platoons with Delayed Communication