Longitudinal Control of a Platoon of Vehicles

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic analysis of a longitudinal control law for a platoon of non-identical vehicles using a non-linear model to represent the vehicle dynamics of each vehicle within the platoon. The basic idea is to take full advantage of recent advances in communication and measurement and using these advances in longitudinal control of a platoon of vehicles: in particular, we assume that for i = 1,2,... vehicle i knows at all times v <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">l</inf> and a <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">l</sup> (the velocity and acceleration of the lead vehicle) in addition to the distance between vehicle i and the preceding vehicle, i - 1.