Swarm model for cooperative multi-vehicle mobility with inter-vehicle communications

A novel model is proposed to formulate the mobility of multiple vehicles with inter-communications moving together as a swarm. This model is inspired by the aggregate motion of social force, and is used to describe the self-organised behaviour of the vehicle swarm in vehicular ad hoc networks. To validate and analyse the proposed model, some simulations are performed in different traffic scenarios, such as the low traffic density with high mobility and the high traffic density with low mobility. Two comparative simulation cases are also provided to explore the effect of vehicular communications on the mobility of multiple vehicles. The simulation results prove that the model can well formulate the cooperative behaviours of multiple vehicles with vehicle-to-vehicle communications in inter-vehicle collision avoidance and obstacle-avoidance scenarios, and these results also strengthen that the inter-vehicular communications can enhance the vehicle safety and traffic efficiency.