Stability and Formation Error of Homogeneous Vehicular Platoons With Communication Time Delays

Abstract

The problem of decentralized control of vehicular platoon is addressed, subject to non-uniform time-varying delays in the communication links among the vehicles. Our control goal is to drive the vehicles to reach a specified line formation, while moving forward according to the platoon leader speed. The control law in each vehicle is computed only by local relative information regarding its neighboring vehicles. The first result shows that communication delays cause steady-state formation error, whose value can be analytically calculated from the system data, and may lead to instability, if the delays values surpass a threshold. Hence, in the light of this finding, we present a decentralized control law to compensate for the delay effect, providing zero steady-state formation error. The paper is concluded by showing simulated experiments over six different communication topologies illustrating the applicability of our proposal.