Cooperative Automated Maneuvering at the 2016 Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge

Cooperative adaptive cruise control and platooning are well-known applications in the field of cooperative automated driving. However, extension toward maneuvering is desired to accommodate common highway maneuvers, such as merging, and to enable urban applications. To this end, a layered control architecture is adopted. In this architecture, the tactical layer hosts the interaction protocols, describing the wireless information exchange to initiate the vehicle maneuvers, supported by a novel wireless message set, whereas the operational layer involves the vehicle controllers to realize the desired maneuvers. This hierarchical approach was the basis for the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC), which was held in May 2016 in The Netherlands. The GCDC provided the opportunity for participating teams to cooperatively execute a highway lane-reduction scenario and an urban intersection-crossing scenario. The GCDC was set up as a competition and, hence, also involving assessment of the teams’ individual performance in a cooperative setting. As a result, the hierarchical architecture proved to be a viable approach, whereas the GCDC appeared to be an effective instrument to advance the field of cooperative automated driving.