Longitudinal Control of Cooperative Vehicle Platooning Considering Time Delays

Cooperative vehicle platooning composed of several vehicles can make full use of road resources, improve traffic safety, increase road traffic capacity, and reduce exhaust emissions. However, the longitudinal control of the platoon is always affected by the delay of vehicle actuators and inter-vehicle communication. In this paper, the platoon model is established considering the vehicle actuators’ lag and inter-vehicle communication delay, integrating the information of the preceding vehicle and the leader vehicle of the platoon, and the platoon longitudinal control method considering delays is designed. The controller parameter boundary conditions which can keep the queue stable are derived based on the Lyapunov stability theory. A platoon composed of ten vehicles is used for simulation analysis and results show that the proposed longitudinal control method can make the controlled vehicle respond quickly to the change of the motion state of its front vehicle and the leader vehicle, and ensure that the vehicle spacing is stable at a safe level with a maximum error of 8%. In addition, when the first vehicle encounters emergency conditions for braking (deceleration reaches 0.8 g), it can also ensure the safety of the platoon and avoid rear-end collisions.