Using Governance and Adaptive Normative Multiagent Systems for Dynamic Vehicle Platoon Formation

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are vehicles able to sense their environments and guide themselves with little or no human input. AVs have the potential to provide a wide variety of benefits to road traffic, such as improving traffic flow, alleviating traffic congestion and reducing car accidents. However, there are scenarios where AVs require governance systems capable of performing collaborative actions in order to keep traffic flowing smoothly and safely. This paradigm shift will support moving from isolated to collaborative autonomous vehicles. Our goal is to create a collaborative governance-based autonomous vehicle approach using adaptive normative multiagent systems to reduce congestion time. With this collaborative perspective in mind, steps should be taken for AVs to improve their collective mobility while not undermining the `social' goals of vehicle platoons and be able to provide benefits such as reduced congestion, increased travel choice and equity, and reduced pollutant emissions.