A Complete Framework for a Behavioral Planner with Automated Vehicles: A Car-Sharing Fleet Relocation Approach

Currently, research on automated vehicles is strongly related to technological advances to achieve a safe, more comfortable driving process in different circumstances. The main achievements are focused mainly on highway and interurban scenarios. The urban environment remains a complex scenario due to the number of decisions to be made in a restrictive context. In this context, one of the main challenges is the automation of the relocation process of car-sharing in urban areas, where the management of the platooning and automatic parking and de-parking maneuvers needs a solution from the decision point of view. In this work, a novel behavioral planner framework based on a Finite State Machine (FSM) is proposed for car-sharing applications in urban environments. The approach considers four basic maneuvers: platoon following, parking, de-parking, and platoon joining. In addition, a basic V2V communication protocol is proposed to manage the platoon. Maneuver execution is achieved by implementing both classical (i.e., PID) and Model-based Predictive Control (i.e., MPC) for the longitudinal and lateral control problems. The proposed behavioral planner was implemented in an urban scenario with several vehicles using the Carla Simulator, demonstrating that the proposed planner can be helpful to solve the car-sharing fleet relocation problem in cities.