Design of Various Dynamical-Based Trajectory Tracking Control Strategies for Multi-Vehicle Platooning Problem

Abstract

Over the past few years, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) has become a topic of substantial interest for development of transportation. One of the most important ITS applications is vehicle platooning, which provides a promising solution for several vital consequences of today's road transportation. Control studies of a platoon of vehicles moving in one dimension has recently attracted extensive research interests. This study investigates three different unidirectional decentralized control algorithms that are used to manage the intervehicle distances between platoon vehicles while following a certain trajectory, i.e. leader vehicle trajectory. The controllers are applied on a platoon of three follower vehicles, each vehicle is represented through a detailed nonlinear longitudinal vehicle dynamic model. Moreover, a comparative study is demonstrated between the controllers implemented, which are Backstepping Control (BSC), Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Sliding Mode Control (SMC). A reference velocity trajectory having simple and aggressive scenarios is built for the vehicles to follow. Simulations are conducted to demonstrate the performance of each controller in terms of spacing error convergence, velocity tracking and realistic control effort. Results show that the desired tracking performance and gap control are achieved by all the controllers with certain limitations that are discussed through out the study.