Autonomous vehicle following control based on an extended state observer

The problem of autonomous vehicle following control based on an extended state observer is investigated in this paper. The time delays of a vehicle's running process, which include a known delay and an unknown delay with an upper bound, are taken into consideration in the vehicle following system. An extended state observer (ESO) is designed to estimate total disturbances including internal disturbances and external disturbances. A controller with the ESO is designed to maintain a desired spacing between the neighboring vehicles. And a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.