GR-TR, Vehicles Platooning, See What I See

Use Case Category: Vehicles Platooning
User Story: See What I See
Location: Greece - Turkey (GR-TR) cross-border corridor

According to 3GPP TS 22.186 R16, Vehicles Platooning “enables the vehicles to dynamically form a group travelling together. All the vehicles in the platoon receive periodic data from the leading vehicle, in order to carry on platoon operations. This information allows the distance between vehicles to become extremely small, i.e., the gap distance translated to time can be very low (sub second). Platooning applications may allow the vehicles following to be autonomously driven”.

User Story: Platooning with “see what I see” functionality in cross-border settings

Observing that there is at least another vehicle on a road, which does not involve intersections and merging with other lanes for a certain time, the two or more vehicles on the move will decide to form a platoon. In the platoon, while one of the vehicles take on the role of the leader, which may or may not have an active driver depending on the SAE level of the vehicle itself, the rest of the vehicles may be controlled automatically by the movements of the leading vehicle.

Once the platoon is formed and the “see-what-I-see” application is informed about the presence of the platoon as well as its members with distinct roles to identify the leader and the follower vehicles, a specific ID is assigned to the platoon by the application. Then, the platoon leader will start transmitting a compressed (with H.265/HEVC codec standard) 4K video stream captured by a camera viewing the road in the front of the vehicle, along with the platoon ID, first to the base station, then to the vEPC, which is to transfer the streaming data to the “see-what-I-see” application server. Matching the video with the recipient vehicles that are the follower trucks in the platoon by using the platoon ID, the application server begins sending the video stream to these through the vEPCs and base stations serving them.

All platoon members will be equipped with on board units (OBU) that have the C-V2X communication capability and a connection to the in-cabin displays of the vehicle (such as a dedicated tablet). Additionally, the platoon leader will share road information collected from its sensors such as short and mid-range radars and cameras as well as internal data about its manoeuvres (i.e. emergency brake, speed up-down etc.) over the PC5 interface with the follower vehicles.

When the platoon arrives to the customs site between Turkey and Greece borders, the platoon is dissolved for further controls at the borders. At this stage, the objective is to allow the truck drivers handle required documentation while the trucks move autonomously at the customs site to visit each of the checkpoints as dictated by the customs agency. For the autonomous crossing of the trucks between the borders, the customs site will be equipped with several sensors and road side units (RSUs) in addition to the 5G network infrastructure. All sensory information from the vehicles and the surrounding will be gathered at the network edge to be processed by an application, which will determine the safest paths for each of the vehicles at the customs site, dynamically shaping their whole trajectory.

After the “truck routing in customs site” is over with no obstacles detected for passage through the border and the drivers have completed their paperwork, they will return to their vehicles. Upon exiting the customs site, the platooning operation and thus the “see-what-I-see” functionality will be initiated again. The final destination of the platoon will be Greece.

While the platoon goes from Turkey to Greece, it is anticipated that at some point, which depends specifically on the radio signal propagation characteristics of the 5G networks, the vehicles in the platoon will roam from the Turkish (Turkcell) operator to the Greek (Cosmote) operator, where an uninterrupted video stream will flow from the leader truck to the follower trucks throughout the roaming procedure.