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Nonlinear Control of Heterogeneous Vehicle Platoon with Time-varying Delays and Limited Communication Range

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  • Control Theory and Applications
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Abstract

Vehicle platooning can significantly increase throughput of transportation, while the impairment of communication may affect the control performance of vehicle platooning. Communication delays are inevitable in the process of driving, which will cause the instability of the platoon. Moreover, the transmission power level between vehicles is finite, resulting in a limited communication range. A nonlinear control algorithm is proposed where the car-following interactions between vehicles are considered. First, a third-order heterogeneous dynamic model is established for vehicles in the platoon. The control gains and parameters are heterogeneous. Then considering the constant time headway spacing policy and the gap supplement, conditions of the control gains for maintaining the internal stability of the platoon are obtained. Second, with time-varying communication delays taken into account, the allowed upper bound of communication delays is derived. Third, given the ability of each vehicle to receive information from multiple predecessors and followers, conditions of string stability are obtained, where the communication range is limited. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, 215009, China

    Haifeng Li, Zhenping Chen, Baochuan Fu & Manman Sun

  2. Suzhou Institute of Intelligent City, Suzhou, 215009, China

    Zhenping Chen & Baochuan Fu

Authors
  1. Haifeng Li
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  2. Zhenping Chen
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  3. Baochuan Fu
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Correspondence to Zhenping Chen.

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Conflicts of Interests/Competing Interests

We declare that we have no conflicts of interest/competing interests.

Haifeng Li received his B.E. degree in electrical engineering and automation from Suzhou University of Science and Technology in 2019. He is a postgraduate student in Suzhou University of Science and Technology. His research interests are intelligent control of vehicle platoon, multi-agent, and distributed optimization.

Zhenping Chen received her B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and information engineering from Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan, China, in 2002, 2005, and 2016, respectively. Since 2017, she has been with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering at Suzhou University of Science and Technology and is currently a Professor. Her research interests include network control systems, average consensus control, and distributed optimization.

Baochuan Fu received his Ph.D. degree in control theory and control engineering from Tongji University, Shanghai, China, in 2008. He is currently a professor of Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China. His main research interests are intelligent control and intelligent buildings.

Manman Sun received her B.E. degree in communication engineering from Suzhou University of Science and Technology in 2019. She is currently a postgraduate student in Suzhou University of Science and Technology. Her research interests are in the area of intelligent transportation, smart city, and intelligent control.

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This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant no. 51874205; Jiangsu Qinglan Project.

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Li, H., Chen, Z., Fu, B. et al. Nonlinear Control of Heterogeneous Vehicle Platoon with Time-varying Delays and Limited Communication Range. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 21, 1727–1738 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-1109-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-1109-6

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