• autonomous driving systems
• co-simulation
• cooperative adaptive cruise control
• cyber-physical system
• INTO-CPS
• platooning

Platooning is a challenging application for future autonomous driving systems in which several driverless vehicles follow a human-driven "leader" vehicle.
The platooning technology provides several benefits in terms of efficiency, safety and environmental sustainability. Among them there is the improvement of the traffic flow, the enhancement of the road capacity, less traffic congestion and fewer traffic accidents, the enhancement of fuel efficiency by lowering the petrol consumption, which results in less pollution.
The aim of this thesis is to formally model platoon-based vehicular Cyber-Physical System and to evaluate their behaviour through co-simulations and Design Space Exploration.
The goal is achieved by means of three contributions: (i) a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control algorithm, which provides a Coordination Layer in the system, was implemented; (ii) an existing vehicle longitudinal dynamic model for the Actuator Layer component was modified; the enhanced solution is fully parameterized and allows to "link together" several vehicles to compose a string of vehicles; besides, the new model makes it possible to change the road surface friction and to "drive" the platoon changing the leader acceleration during the co-simulation; (iii) specific tools to co-simulate and evaluate results were used.