Caravan = start from the worldmap, you can add pawn's and animals. Pack animal's would got a green positiv number to add carry capacity to the caravan.
Transport pod, you need to build launcher and pods, select the pods and select what you want to load into them. Then you can shoot them into the worldmap and they will form a caravan at the destination.
(hint: if you got psycast farskip, you can let them teleport home (if you have a pawn at home))