A Side Chain Consensus-Based Decentralized Autonomous Vehicle Group Formation and Maintenance Method in a Highway Scene

Forming a stable autonomous vehicle group is extremely challenging in a highway scene that has several entrances and exits. Existing studies focus on centralized autonomous vehicle groups with leading nodes. Such groups suffer from unbalanced computing tasks, asymmetric information, and weak stability. This article introduces a side chain consensus-based decentralized autonomous vehicle group formation method in a highway scene. First, we side chain consensus to describe states of autonomous vehicles. Then, we give decentralized autonomous vehicle group formation and maintenance methods based on side chain consensus. Finally, we conduct simulations to evaluate the quality of side chain consensus and stability of vehicle groups, which shows that our method has better properties in the balance of computing tasks, information symmetry, and stability than existing methods.