Performance Evaluation of Heavy Commercial Road Vehicle Platoon Stability Under Cyber Threats

Platooning of Heavy Commercial Road Vehicles (HCRVs) would facilitate efficient freight transport while reducing fuel consumption and emission. Higher levels of safety and automation in HCRVs demand high-fidelity in communication and computing resources. HCRV platoons visualized as Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) are susceptible to potential cyber attacks, posing risks to their safety and sustainability. This paper focuses on a systematic evaluation of the effects of a class of cyber threats on platoon stability. The major cyber threat perceptions were mathematically modeled into the velocity information communicated over Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) network. The platoon performance with data uncertainties in the velocity of preceding vehicle is found to be equivalent to the nominal platoon behaviour, with faults manifesting as a deviation in the time headway being tracked by the follower vehicles.