Adaptive NN Event-Triggered Output Feedback Control for Heterogeneous Vehicular Platoon Systems with Switching Topologies

In this paper, an adaptive neural network (NN) output feedback control problem for heterogeneous vehicular platoon systems (HVPS) with input saturation under switching topologies is investigated. To improve the utilization efficiency of inter-vehicle network resources, an event-triggered (ET) communication mechanism is proposed for intermittent transmission. The NN state observer is designed to estimate the unmeasurable states. Since a part of vehicles cannot receive information from their neighbors and leader under intermittent data transmission, a distributed ET observer is designed. By combining constant time headway (CTH) strategy with the prescribed performance functions, a strong string stability condition is established. Based on the designed NN state observer and the distributed ET observer, a NN adaptive ET output feedback control scheme is proposed by backstepping control methodology. It is demonstrated that the proposed control scheme ensures the acceleration and velocity of the vehicles in the platoon to be in line with those of the leader and maintain a required distance and the inter-vehicle spacing tracking error asymptotically converges to zero. It also gives HVPS better transient and steady-state performance. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed control scheme is verified by a simulation experiment.