Towards connected autonomous driving: review of use-cases

Connected autonomous vehicles are considered as mitigators of issues such as traffic congestion, road safety, inefficient fuel consumption and pollutant emissions that current road transportation system suffers from. Connected autonomous vehicles utilise communication systems to enhance the performance of autonomous vehicles and consequently improve transportation by enabling cooperative functionalities, namely, cooperative sensing and cooperative manoeuvring. The former refers to the ability to share and fuse information gathered from vehicle sensors and road infrastructures to create a better understanding of the surrounding environment while the latter enables groups of vehicles to drive in a co-ordinated way which ultimately results in a safer and more efficient driving environment. However, there is a gap in understanding how and to what extent connectivity can contribute to improving the efficiency, safety and performance of autonomous vehicles. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the potential benefits that can be achieved from connected autonomous vehicles through analysing five use-cases: (i) vehicle platooning, (ii) lane changing, (iii) intersection management, (iv) energy management and (v) road friction estimation. The current paper highlights that although connectivity can enhance the performance of autonomous vehicles and contribute to the improvement of current transportation system performance, the level of achievable benefits depends on factors such as the penetration rate of connected vehicles, traffic scenarios and the way of augmenting off-board information into vehicle control systems.