列车虚拟编组技术能够实现车辆资源的高效灵活利用，是解决轨道交通客流时空分布不均衡问题的有效方法，已成为国内外的研究热点。既有研究借鉴了汽车编队追踪的思路，主要关注于列车稳定追踪的相关方法，未能完全适应轨道交通的实际需求。针对城市轨道交通(简称“城轨”)虚拟编组研究的需要，深入分析城轨列车运行的特征，在此基础上总结提出包括站台停车时间差等在内的城轨列车虚拟编组应符合的技术性能指标；其次，针对虚拟编组的技术特征，提出包括大小交路和Y型线路等适合列车虚拟编组的潜在应用场景，并对实现虚拟编组的关键技术及其原理进行介绍，可为城轨列车虚拟编组研究提供参考。

Virtual coupling has become a hot topic worldwide. It is supposed to be able to enhance efficient and flexible utilization of vehicle resources, and is an effective technology to solve the problem of uneven spatial and temporal distribution of passenger flows in railways. Existing research adopts the idea of vehicle platooning in road traffic and mainly focuses on the methods to keep the stability of train tracking, while this main focus fails to fully meet the actual needs of railways. Aiming at the application of virtual coupling in urban rail transit (hereinafter metro for short), this work first analyzes the real characteristics of metros, based on which summarizes the key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be met by virtual coupling in metros, such as parking time difference and so on. Then, potential application scenarios suitable for virtual coupling are proposed, including large and small routes, Y-topology tracks, etc. Furthermore, key technologies of virtual coupling are introduced, to provide a guidance for future research on virtual coupling in metros.

U231