arXiv subjects

Qiaoxuan Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Qiaoxuan Zhang.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Scaled Three-Vehicle Platooning Platform

Vehicle platooning has attracted increasing attention as a promising approach to improve traffic efficiency, energy consumption, and roadway safety through coordinated multi-vehicle operation. A key challenge in platooning lies in maintaining stable and accurate path tracking during dynamic maneuvers such as lane changes, where lateral deviations and heading disturbances generated by the lead vehicle may propagate downstream to following vehicles. Robust longitudinal and lateral control systems are therefore essential not only for individual vehicle tracking performance, but also for overall platoon stability. For experimental studies, the Intelligent Mobility and Robotics Lab (IMRL) develops a scaled multi-vehicle platform for autonomous platooning research, with a particular emphasis on cooperative control and human-in-the-loop autonomy. This platform consists of one human-operable lead vehicle and two autonomous followers, enabling controlled and repeatable experiments on leader-follower coordination. Compared with full-scale field testing, this scaled platform offers a safer, lower-cost, and more flexible environment for rapid prototyping, controller validation, and multi-agent autonomy studies, while providing stronger physical realism than purely simulation-based evaluations.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Rationale Behind Human-Led Autonomous Truck Platooning

Autonomous trucking has progressed rapidly in recent years, transitioning from early demonstrations to OEM-integrated commercial deployments. However, fully driverless freight operations across heterogeneous climates, infrastructure conditions, and regulatory environments remain technically and socially challenging. This paper presents a systematic rationale for human-led autonomous truck platooning as a pragmatic intermediate pathway. First, we analyze 53 major truck accidents across North America (2021-2026) and show that human-related factors remain the dominant contributors to severe crashes, highlighting both the need for advanced assistance/automated driving systems and the complexity of real-world driving environments. Second, we review recent industry developments and identify persistent limitations in long-tail edge cases, winter operations, remote-region logistics, and large-scale safety validation. Based on these findings, we argue that a human-in-the-loop (HiL) platooning architecture offers layered redundancy, adaptive judgment in uncertain conditions, and a scalable validation framework. Furthermore, the dual-use capability of follower vehicles enables an evolutionary transition from coordinated platooning to independent autonomous operation. Rather than representing a compromise, human-led platooning provides a technically grounded and societally aligned bridge toward large-scale autonomous freight deployment.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2016

Self-assembly of colloidal particles in deformation landscapes of electrically driven layer undulations in cholesteric liquid crystals

We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is influenced by the presence of colloidal inclusions and, in turn, layers' undulations mediate the spatial patterning of particle locations. We find that the bending of cholesteric layers around a colloidal particle surface prompts the local nucleation of an undulations lattice at electric fields below the well-defined threshold known for liquid crystals without inclusions, and that the onset of the resulting lattice is locally influenced, both dimensionally and orientationally, by the initial arrangements of colloids defined using laser tweezers. Spherical particles tend to spatially localize in the regions of strong distortions of the cholesteric layers, while colloidal nanowires exhibit an additional preference for multistable alignment offset along various vectors of the undulations lattice. Magnetic rotation of superparamagnetic colloidal particles couples with the locally distorted helical axis and undulating cholesteric layers in a manner that allows for a controlled three-dimensional translation of these particles. These interaction modes lend insight into the physics of liquid crystal structure-colloid elastic interactions, as well as point the way towards guided self-assembly of reconfigurable colloidal composites with potential applications in diffraction optics and photonics.

cond-mat.soft↗