Existentialist platooning

The recently started SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project is looking into platooning, allowing vehicles to drive with much shorter headway to increase road capacity, reduce congestion and safe fuel. Of course the reaction time of human drivers is way too long so autonomous longitudinal control is required, think of it as a cruise-control on steroids.

From the BBC-article:

"An EU-financed research project is looking at inexpensive ways of getting vehicles to travel in a 'platoon' on Europe's motorways.

Each road train could include up to eight separate vehicles - cars, buses and trucks will be mixed in each one.

The EU hopes to cut fuel consumption, journey times and congestion by linking vehicles together.

Early work on the idea suggests that fuel consumption could be cut by 20% among those cars and trucks travelling behind the lead vehicle."

There seems to be a lot of interest in platooning at the moment, see also the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge for example.