Vehicle Platoon Control Based on Third-Order Heterogeneous Model and Predictive Spacing Strategy

This article studies the problem of cooperative control of heterogeneous vehicles in a platoon. First, a novel predictive spacing strategy (PSS) is proposed for vehicles that are described by a third-order heterogeneous dynamics model. The PSS utilizes the current velocity information of each vehicle to predict its travel distance forward, thereby enhancing the control performance of the vehicle platoon. Second, the vehicle platooning problem is equivalently transformed into a leader-following consensus (LFC) for multi-vehicle system by introducing new variables, and in this way a distributed linear control protocol with a generalized structure is proposed. Then, we cleverly employ a linear transformation based on a directed spanning tree (DST) to further convert the consensus problem into an asymptotic stability problem with partial variables of the equivalent system. On this basis, the conditions for achieving platoon control in the multi-vehicle system are derived in conjunction with the partial stability theory, and the conditions for the system to satisfy string stability are further deduced. In addition, a method for solving the gain matrix in the control protocol is elaborated. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed PSS and the designed protocol is verified by numerical simulation.