Cooperative Spacing Control for Interconnected Vehicle Systems With Input Delays

Abstract

Time delay is an inevitably negative factor to real-time vehicle control. This paper investigates cooperative spacing control of vehicle platoons with input delays under no communication between vehicles (including the lead vehicle). The spacing control strategy is based solely on self information and onboard measurement of the immediate neighbor vehicles (preceding and succeeding vehicles). Considering the delay constraints, sufficient stability conditions are derived for the vehicle system with input delays. To avoid transient spacing errors to amplify along the string of vehicles, we give conditions that guarantee string stability of the vehicular platoon, by which the upper bound of tolerable delays are derived in terms of controller parameters and the model parameters. An algorithm is then given to determine the controller parameters using the stability and string stability conditions simultaneously. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness and the advantages of the proposed control methodology.