Improved Spacing Policy-Based Predefined-Time Cooperative Control of Vehicles

This paper studies the problem of cooperative lateral-longitudinal control for a collection of vehicles. To eliminate the limitation of zero initial spacing errors, a novel spacing policy is introduced. Then, a fast vehicular cooperative control method is proposed based on the new spacing policy, which can ensure internal stability, string stability and traffic flow stability. The algorithm is derived via the use of sliding mode control with a predefined-time terminal sliding mode surface. The efficiency and feasibility of the algorithm are demonstrated by numerical simulations.