Thesis Proposal

FollowMe – Extending a Cooperative Vehicle Platooning Robotic Testbed

Context and Motivation

The development of highly automated and cooperative driving technology has evolved
significantly in the last few years. Communication between vehicles (V2V) allows road users to
share information and achieve a common goal – such as vehicle platooning - thus adding new
capabilities to transport systems. This cooperative vehicle application can bring increased
efficiency and road capacity, as well as a number of societal benefits, by having vehicle groups
traveling close together.

Nevertheless, the development of such cooperative autonomous vehicle systems is quite

complex due to the inherent multidimensional problem that encompasses control,
communications, and safety. These Cooperating Cyber-Physical Systems (Co-CPS) impose an
unprecedented integration between communication, sensing, and actuation actions, alongside
the impact of the particular characteristics of the vehicle dynamics and the environment. This
significantly increases the complexity of these systems, which, due to their critical safety
requirements, must undergo extensive testing and validation to delimit the optimal safety
bounds. However, the safety concerns and cost of relying on real vehicles is prohibitive for early
deployments. A solution lies in the use of robotic platforms, since these are relatively cheaper
and allow to partially test real platforms and components, as well as different control
mechanisms.

At CISTER Labs, the ICARuS team, working in Cooperative Autonomous Reliable Systems, has
been actively working inline with several European Projects to develop a Cooperative Driving
Test and Validation framework. Besides encompassing advanced simulation and Hardware in
the Loop support for such cooperative scenarios, the team also developed a 1/10th Cooperative
Platooning Robotic Testbed. Real ITS-G5 On Board Units (OBU) were integrated in the vehicles
for communications support and a cooperative control algorithm that solely relies on
communications was successfully implemented.

The initial goal of this project, which already produced two master Thesis, is to improve the
platooning behavior of the vehicles by extending the sensor array of the follower vehicles.
Additionally, the candidate is expected to extend the testbed with additional functionalities which
may include Edge and Cloud support for additional processing power and additional
communication interfaces for increased safety.
We are looking for bright, young, talented engineers that enjoy a challenging research
environment with strong industry drive, to work in hot topics, in the line of ongoing collaborations
with top industrial players such as Altran, GMV Skysoft and Bosch. The student will be given
relevant training and the opportunity to work in an applied research kind of environment, in
close collaboration with important industry players in the automotive arena, in line with an EU
Project.

Objetives
1. Acquaintance with the Robotic Testbed.
2. Survey on the state of the art on sensing and perception technologies.
3. Training and exploration of ITS-G5 communication technologies and of the ROS robotic
framework;
4. Inclusion of additional sensing and perception capabilities to the follower robotic
vehicles.
5. Improvement of the platooning behavior at different speeds.
6. Extension of the testbed via inclusion of Edge/Cloud services and other additional
communication links.
7. Performance analysis of the platoon and validation of security and safety proposals;
8. Thesis writing.
9. Publication of a scientific paper.

Details
Supervisor: Ricardo Severino (rar@isep.ipp.pt )
Co-Supervisor: Ênio Filho (enpvf@isep.ipp.pt )
Facilities: CISTER-Labs, Rua Alfredo Allen, 535, 4200-135 Porto (Next to ISEP).
Schedule: the student has the flexibility to accommodate his academics activities in the best
possible fashion.

CISTER Research Unit

CISTER is multi-institutionally framed by ISEP (main hosting institution) and FEUP. It is a world
leading research unit in the areas of Real-Time Embedded Computing Systems (RTECS) and
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), with researchers from 20+ different nationalities, and has more
than 300 international partners in academia and industry. CISTER is the only research unit in
Portugal, in the areas of ECE and CS, to top-rank as “Excellent” in the FCT international
evaluations of 2003, 2008 and 2018.

It has graduated 20+ PhDstudents during 2013-2017, who are now in prominent positions in
either academia or industry. CISTER is housed in a 3-storey modern building, entirely used for
CISTER activities. The building includes a dedicated PhD-student level, laboratories, meeting
rooms, library, cafeteria, kitchen, auditoriums, multi-cultural prayer room, etc. The
laboratories feature up-to date technologies covering many safety critical domains
(automotive, avionics, smartcities, building automation, etc.). Over the years, CISTER has
hosted various flagship conferences in the areas of real-time systems, CPS, wireless sensor
networks or factory communication systems.