From the PhD thesis found on Sun 20-Apr-2008:
The first vehicle of a platoon is called the platoon leader and its
role is to manage the platoon and guide it on the road at an undefined level of authority.
The other vehicles are called followers and their main goal is to maintain a specific distance in time with the preceding vehicle using information from sensor(s).
p6 shows diagrams of platoons splitting and entering the platoon
Potential car simulator program http://www.carsim.com/ also see notes in section 1.3.3
Thesis is well written, but wordy …
Demonstration of Integrated Longitudinal and Lateral Control for the Operation of Automated Vehicles in Platoons
Rajesh Rajamani, Member, IEEE, Han-Shue Tan, Boon Kait Law, and Wei-Bin Zhang
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 8, NO. 4, JULY 2000
PDF] A Survey of Commercial & Open Source Unmanned Vehicle Simulators – all 3 versions »
J Craighead, R Murphy, J Burke – Robotics and Automation, 2007 IEEE International Conference …, 2007 – jeffcraighead.com
… Microsoft Robotics Studio – Microsoft’s Robotics Studio[25] provides a networkable,
service-based- architecture framework for developing real robots. …
