Modeling and Analysis of Platoon Dispersion of Autonomous and Manual Mixed Vehicles Based on Cellular Automata

Urban road traffic is bound to face a long period of parallel mixed automated-manual vehicles. In order to study the characteristics of platoon dispersion under this situation, based on the cellular automata model and the postulation of classical platoon dispersion model, this paper established a two-lane automated-manual vehicles traffic flow dispersion model and made a simulation of the traffic of mixed automated-manual vehicles platoon. The presentation of simulation’s results is analyzed, and the influence of the proportion of autonomous vehicles in the platoon on the platoon dispersion characteristics is explored. The following conclusions are obtained. The platoon characteristics increase at first and then decrease with the growth of the rate of automated vehicles. The platoon of pure autonomous vehicles represents the absolute platoon characteristics. The characteristics change significantly when the rate of automated vehicles approaches 1. Lane-changing behavior can optimize the utilization of space resources of the platoon.