Disturbance Observer-Based Cooperative Control of Vehicle Platoons Subject to Mismatched Disturbance

Abstract

The connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technique is a critical application of intelligent vehicles (IV) and is gaining widespread attention for its prospects of increasing driving efficiency. This paper investigates longitudinal control of vehicle platoons subject to both mismatched velocity disturbance and matched acceleration disturbance. The mismatched and matched disturbances are estimated by a finite-time disturbance observer (DO). Furthermore, two coupled sliding mode platoon controllers are proposed incorporating observed disturbances for longitudinal cooperation of platoons. By using and extending the coupled sliding mode technique, not only closed-loop stability but also string stability is finally proved under bidirectional (BD) and predecessor-following (PF) topologies, respectively. Simulations and an experiment are conducted to validate not only the theoretical effectiveness but also the practical performance of the proposed controllers.