Quantitative Safety Analysis of a Coordinated Emergency Brake Protocol for Vehicle Platoons

In this paper, we present a general methodology to estimate
safety related parameter values of cooperative cyber-physical system-of-
systems. As a case study, we consider a vehicle platoon model equipped
with a novel distributed protocol for coordinated emergency braking.
The estimation methodology is based on learning-based testing; which is
an approach to automated requirements testing that combines machine
learning with model checking.
Our methodology takes into account vehicle dynamics, control algorithm
design, inter-vehicle communication protocols and environmental factors
such as message packet loss rates. Empirical measurements from road
testing of vehicle-to-vehicle communication in a platoon are modeled
and used in our case study. We demonstrate that the minimum global
time headway for our platoon model equipped with the CEBP function
scales well with respect to platoon size.