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arXiv · 2511.06026

Probe-and-Release Coordination of Platoons at Highway Bottlenecks with Unknown Parameters

Abstract

This paper considers coordination of platoons of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) at mixed-autonomy bottlenecks in the face of three practically important factors, viz. time-varying traffic demand, random CAV platoon sizes, and capacity breakdowns. Platoon coordination is essential to smoothen the interaction between CAV platoons and non-CAV traffic. Based on a fluid queuing model, we develop a "probe-and-release" algorithm that simultaneously estimates environmental parameters and coordinates CAV platoons for traffic stabilization. We show that this algorithm ensures bounded estimation errors and bounded traffic queues. The proof builds on a Lyapunov function that jointly penalizes estimation errors and traffic queues and a drift argument for an embedded Markov process. We validate the proposed algorithm in a standard micro-simulation environment and compare against a representative deep reinforcement learning method in terms of control performance and computational efficiency.

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BibTeXRIS

Yi Gao, Xi Xiong, Karl H. Johansson, Li Jin. 2025-11-08. Probe-and-Release Coordination of Platoons at Highway Bottlenecks with Unknown Parameters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06026

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