Fuel Economy in Truck Platooning: A Literature Overview and Directions for Future Research

A truck platoon is a set of virtually linked trucks that travel in tandem with small intervehicle distances. Several studies have proved that traveling in platoons can significantly improve fuel economy due to the reduced aerodynamic drag. However, most literature only provides scattered pieces of information regarding fuel economy in truck platoons. Therefore, a literature survey is needed to understand what has been studied and what problems remain to be further addressed. This paper presents an overview of existing studies to illustrate the state of the art about fuel savings for truck platooning. Specifically, it summarized the methodologies, the contributing factors of fuel consumption, the coordination methods to improve the platooning rate, and the look-ahead control strategies to generate fuel-efficient speed profiles for each vehicle driving in a platoon over different road grades. After that, the autonomous truck platooning was introduced, and we raised and discussed a couple of outstanding questions to be addressed in future work.