Distributed Vehicular Platoon Control Considering Communication Topology Disturbances

Platooning is now a hot research topic due to its advantages in traffic efficiency and fuel economy. This paper investigates the internal stability of vehicular platoons with communication topology disturbances. An inertially delayed linear vehicle model is employed. Communication topologies are modeled by directed graphs. Using a distributed linear feedback controller, we yield a high dimensional linear model for the closed-loop platoon dynamics. Then a Riccati inequality based algorithm is proposed to calculate the stabilizing control gain. It is proven that a lower bound on the dwell time of the topology change should be satisfied, so that asymptotic platoon stability can be achieved. Finally, the proposed theorem is validated through numerical simulations.