Control of Heterogeneous Platoons Using a Delay-Based Spacing Policy

Abstract

A control design approach for heterogeneous platoons is derived that achieves tracking of the desired delay-based spacing policy. The delay-based spacing policy induces an identical spatially varying velocity reference for all vehicles of the platoon. Thus, the control law is derived in the spatial domain. For a heterogeneous platoon, with individual dynamics of each vehicle, the first step of the control design is an individual exact linearization of each vehicle dynamics that transforms the heterogeneous platoon into a homogeneous platoon, where all vehicles have identical dynamics with respect to the new input. Then, a well-known control design for homogeneous platoons may be applied. The results are illustrated by simulations.