21. Distributed model predictive control of automated vehicles, platoons and flocks in lane-free traffic

In this video, 5 vehicle entities, including a triangle-shaped flock of 5 vehicles (shown with the color orange), a platoon of 3 vehicles (shown with the color green), and three single-vehicle entities (shown with colors yellow, magenta and blue) are considered. At the start, vehicle entities are longitudinally located in the reverse order of their desired speeds. The flock and platoon move at longitudinal speeds of 17m/s and 19m/s, respectively, while the individual vehicles move at 19m/s and 20m/s. At first, the platoon smoothly overtakes the flock exhibiting a snake-like movement behavior, while the flock vehicles open up to make way and facilitate the platoon passage. Then, the single-vehicle entities, shown by blue, magenta and yellow, overtake the platoon and flock as they have higher desired speeds. Note that the 3 single vehicles find different ways to overtake the flock, e.g. through or on the side of it. As safety is of highest importance, platoon and flock entities temporarily may deform to allow overtakes and reform eventually.

In this video, 5 vehicle entities, including a triangle-shaped flock of 5 vehicles (shown with the color orange), another flock of 3 vehicles (shown with the color green), and three single-vehicle entities (shown with yellow, magenta and blue) are considered. At the beginning, the smaller green flock overtakes the larger orange one. This happens as the orange flock opens up to make way for the green flock, while the green flock tightens to pass through the orange one. Then the single-vehicle entities overtake the flocks using different paths. To actively facilitate this, flocks need to deform to provide lateral space for faster groups to overtake. This is again a cooperative behavior emerging from all-around vehicle nudging.