Automatic parking and platooning for electric vehicles redistribution in a car-sharing application

In car-sharing applications and during certain time slots, some parking stations become full whereas others are empty. To redress this imbalance, vehicle redistribution strategies must be elaborated. As automatic relocation cannot be in place, one alternative is to get a leader vehicle, driven by a human, which come to pick up and drop off vehicles over the stations. This paper deals with the vehicle redistribution problem among parking stations using this strategy and focusing on automatic parking and vehicle platooning. We present an easy exit parking controller and path planning based only on geometric approach and vehicle's characteristics. Once the vehicle exits the parking, it joins a platoon of vehicles and follows it automatically to go to an empty parking space.