Decentralized receding horizon control of multiple vehicles subject to communication failure

In this paper, the decentralized receding horizon control (DRHC) of multiple cooperative vehicles with the possibility of communication failure is investigated. The neighboring vehicles exchange their computed trajectories at each sample time to maintain cooperation objectives. It is assumed that the communication failure is partial in nature, which in turn leads to large communication delays. A new reconfigurable DRHC approach is developed that guarantees the safety of the entire fleet in the presence of inter-vehicle communication failures. The concept of tube RHC is introduced to guarantee the safety of the fleet against collisions during faulty conditions. In this approach, a tube shaped trajectory set is used instead of a trajectory for the neighboring vehicles experiencing the communication failure.