Distributed model predictive control algorithm for vehicle platooning

This paper proposes a distributed model predictive control algorithm applied in a vehicle platooning control problem. The control objective of each vehicle in the platoon is to follow a imposed position trajectory by means of distributed model predictive control, while maintaining a constant spacing between vehicles. A delay-free communication architecture is proposed and two cases are evaluated, namely: i) an unconstrained optimization problem and ii) an optimization problem in which the constraints are imposed based on the received information. The simulation results show that introducing constraints helps improving the results.